


A Nation of Two

by novelized



Category: Glee
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-27
Updated: 2011-07-27
Packaged: 2017-10-21 20:06:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/229230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novelized/pseuds/novelized
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It all started with Facebook. [In which Kurt sets his relationship status to 'single' and Blaine transfers to McKinley.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Nation of Two

It’s the dumbest thing, but it starts (as all good high school drama does) with Facebook. Namely Kurt’s staunch refusal to get one, even though he’s the only teenager in all of southwestern Ohio who hasn’t. It’s not really a _thing._ Blaine doesn’t actually care that much. Partially, it’s just an excuse to give Kurt a hard time. But also he thinks social networking has a lot of advantages these days, what with keeping up with your classmates and, well, he doesn’t complain about the picture uploading capability.

It takes three weeks and a little bit of blackmail to wear Kurt down. Blaine’s never claimed to be above playing dirty.

“I hope you’re pleased with yourself,” Kurt says, lip curled in disgust as he types his email into the box and then lets the cursor hover uncertainly over _sign up_. “And I hope you don’t expect to see me online anytime after this.”

“Oh, just click already,” Blaine says back, entirely unsympathetic.

He does, and Blaine has to walk him through the basics: entering his information, uploading a picture, requesting Blaine to be his friend. It’s a painfully slow process, and Kurt gripes every step of the way. But then it’s time to fill in _relationship status_ , and Blaine hesitates. They haven’t ever actually talked about what they were. They’ve held hands and they’ve hugged and they kissed in an empty corridor at school, once, but they’ve never put a label on themselves. It’s a talk Blaine’s been meaning to initiate, he just… hasn’t gotten around to it yet. This, he thinks, is the perfect segue.

Kurt’s hand pauses on the mouse for less than five seconds, and then he straightens in his seat and selects an option before moving on to _activities._ Blaine glances at him out of the corner of his eye but says nothing. Fine, he thinks. There’s that. Apparently there’s no need to have that talk after all.

 _Relationship status: single._

So at least now he knows.

***

“You and Kurt aren’t dating,” David says when Blaine informs him the next day, “the same way Wes isn’t weirdly and psychosomatically attached to his gavel.”

“But Wes _is_ weirdly and psychosomatically attached to his gavel,” Blaine responds, helping to straighten the councilmen’s table two minutes and thirty-seven seconds before order is to be called.

David just grins. “Exactly.”

***

The news of Karofksy’s sudden absence makes its way to Blaine via Rachel Berry, of all people. They’ve taken to texting a few times a day ( _“Patti LuPone on Good Morning America tomorrow!” – “Would a mauve headband go with a burgundy sweater?”_ ) and the most recent one comes to him in the middle of first period, his phone vibrating silently against his thigh. He waits for a break in lecture before discretely fishing it out, and that’s when he sees:

 _ **From: Rachel B** 8:02 am.  
Dave Karofksy out of closet. Withdrew from school last week. My dads told me this might happen._

Blaine has to read it three times before he actually believes it. Really? It was that simple? He was just… gone? (Had some of the football players given him a hard time? Was he running away, like Blaine did?) And what does this mean? For – for Kurt. For all of them, but mostly for Kurt. He doesn’t know what to say. Celebrating seems wrong. Instead, he sends back one word that’s a pretty concise summation of his feelings:

 _ **From: Blaine** 8:11 am.  
Wow._

***

He doesn’t bring it up during lunch, because Kurt’s heavily concentrated on both writing an essay in French and spooning low-fat yogurt into his mouth, and besides, they’re flanked on every side by some of the other Warblers. Blaine likes this time, the easy flow of conversation, the gentle jabs at everyone’s expense, but he would’ve preferred to be alone. He wants to talk to Kurt. He wants to talk to him, but he’s also putting it off. He wants to submit his question into the universe, just to get it off his chest, but he’s not sure he wants the answer. Not being selfish isn’t always as easy as he makes it look.

“Earth to Blaine.”

Blinking and nearly upturning his water at the sudden intrusion into his thoughts, Blaine rights the cup just in time and forces a smile onto his face. “Sorry,” he says automatically. “I guess I was spacing out.”

“Clearly,” Jeff laughs, and then points to his french fries. “Are you going to finish those?”

He hasn’t eaten, but he’s not hungry. Mostly he’d just been pushing food around his tray. “No,” he says, sliding them over. “They’re all yours.”

Kurt pauses in the middle of a particularly difficult conjugation and lifts an eyebrow at him. He always has that way of his, of reading Blaine. Of noticing things no one else does. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Of course.” Despite the heavy feeling in the pit of his stomach, Blaine shoots him a little wink. “Just trying to watch my figure for Regionals.”

“I see.” Kurt goes back to writing, looking pleased with himself for remembering the proper translation of _je vis d'amour et d'eau douce_. Without breaking his flow, without even looking up, he adds, “Your figure is just fine.”

***

“We’re not dating,” Blaine tells Jeff and Nick, but they don’t look like they believe him.

“We’re not dating,” Blaine tells his mom, but she just glances backwards over her shoulder and eyes him distrustfully before sliding a tray of cookies into the oven.

“We’re not dating,” Blaine tells the picture of Kurt that’s thumbtacked to his corkboard above his computer desk, but it’s just a picture, so it doesn’t say anything back.

***

The most outstanding thing about the Warblers, Blaine realizes three days after losing Regionals, is their ability to evade change. Monday afternoon they’re back at practice, ironed blazers and straightened ties and a surprising lack of glum countenance. They made it farther this year than they had the previous; Blaine supposes “2011 Midwest Regional Show Choir Championship Participants” will be added to their many banners sometime before the end of the semester. This used to be something he took comfort in. Now it just makes him feel sort of empty, like he’s the only one who’s disappointed about their loss.

The meeting begins, as always, with three precise taps from Wes’s mallet, everyone assembled in their normal seats, Blaine perched on the arm of one of the leather couches. “Let the Council come to order,” Wes says like clockwork, folding his hands over the cherry oak of the table. David and Thad flank him on either side, stiff and upright as expected. “First and foremost, we all had a great run at Regionals and we’ve received several compliments from our various Warbler alumni. Specifically the Dalton Academy Class of 1960 – many of whom, as you all know, were in attendance thanks to our friends and supporters at the Shady Oaks Retirement Village.”

They all clap politely. Blaine glances over at Kurt, Kurt lifts an eyebrow at him before turning away. Blaine looks at his knees and smiles.

After rehearsal, a solid hour that involves minimal jumping on furniture, unfortunately, the room clears out in waves. The underclassmen leave first, straightening chairs as they go, and then some of the older guys, one-by-one or in small groups, until it dwindles down to the council members and Blaine, and Kurt, of course, who’s waiting for a ride.

“That felt great today,” Wes says, all positive energy as he shrugs back into his blazer.

David nods in agreement. “It doesn’t even matter what the judges thought.”

“Well, it matters a little,” Blaine counters, but then he offers up a shrug. “At least we all still know we’re the best.” He dusts an imaginary speck of dust off his shoulder. Usually it makes Kurt laugh. Tonight, however, he’s got a far-off look in his eyes, and he just chuckles kind of distantly, like he wasn’t really paying attention. Blaine files it away as ‘things to ask Kurt later,’ a category that seems to be growing daily.

“Who wants to go to New York, anyway?” Thad says, and then, hoisting his backpack over his shoulder, “Hey, Kurt, how do you think New Directions will do at Nationals?”

Kurt smiles, but it’s the sort of smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Trust me, at this point they’re vastly underprepared for any semblance of a national competition, but they’ll pull together just before. We always do.”

“We?” Blaine asks, before he can stop himself. Kurt glances up.

“Sorry?”

“You said we.”

He laughs again, airy and nonchalant. “I did? I didn’t even realize. I must be more sleep-deprived than I thought.”

“All right, boys, let’s lock it up,” David says, putting an end to any sort of conversation furthering. “We have to be out of here by ten on the dot.”

Blaine doesn’t bother to point out the fact that they’re the ones with the keys, and, in that regard, the only ones who would know if they didn’t adhere to the rules; instead, he nods and heads for the doors. “You ready, Kurt?” he asks, and they grab their bags and make their way out into the dark night of the parking lot, navigating through beams of streetlight to Blaine’s car, four rows out. Kurt rounds the hood and climbs in the passenger seat like it’s second nature to him, which, at this point, it probably is. They’ve taken turns driving so often that eventually they’d forgotten to actually ask – it was as much of a nonissue as, say, deciding what tie-and-jacket combination to wear to school each morning. Blaine likes their little arrangement. It’s stable. It’s easy.

Tonight Kurt buckles his seatbelt and Blaine follows suit and there’s silence between them, but it’s heavier than the usual comfortable silences they share. Or is Blaine just imagining it? He’s probably just imagining it.

Neither of them say anything until they’ve pulled out of the parking lot and merged onto 75 South, the radio on but turned low so that all they can hear is the whisper of an oldies song. Blaine can’t take the quiet anymore, so he tries to think of something, anything to say, but just as he starts with, “Hey, so –” Kurt opens his mouth and says “So I’ve –” and they both break off and laugh, surprised.

“Sorry,” Blaine says immediately, “you go.”

“No, you were talking first, go ahead.”

“No, seriously, it’s all you.”

They fall silent again.

Blaine fiddles with the radio dial, scrolls through music stations without even paying attention to what’s playing, and then decides to bite the bullet. He and Kurt could talk about anything, right? That was the best part of their friendship. They didn’t keep secrets. Nothing was off-bounds.

“I got a text from Rachel Berry a few days ago,” he says, eyes flicking over to Kurt’s face for a split second to gauge his reaction.

Kurt just looks amused. “Oh? Was she propositioning you for another date? Or did she just want to know, for the fifth time, if unicorn-print knee socks will ever be in fashion?”

“What’s wrong with unicorn-print knee socks?” he asks, but he’s grinning, and Kurt groans and elbows him in the side. “Hey, watch it, I’m the driver. Both of our lives are at stake right now.”

“Good thing I trust you, then,” Kurt teases, giving him a lofty look. The laughter dies out of his throat.

“Rachel told me Karofsky left.” The words come out in one jumbled breath, and he wishes he could’ve been a little more eloquent, but at least it’s out there. Kurt drops the joking façade and almost visibly deflates.

“Oh.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, oh.” Kurt smoothes an imaginary wrinkle out of his iron-pressed pants, keeping his gaze leveled. “I heard that too.”

Blaine nods and tightens his grip on the steering wheel. “So it’s true?”

“As far as I know, yes. Although I don’t know what the circumstances are… somehow I don’t think he decided to leave school and become an international one man gay pride parade.”

Blaine lets out a soft but appreciate snort. “No, probably not.” He drums his fingers against the wheel. “How long have you known?”

“Since last Friday.”

They’ve only got about three minutes left of the drive; after taking the exit ramp and the two left turns that open to Kurt’s neighborhood, Blaine makes a snap decision and pulls the car off to the side of the road. He turns the lights off and cuts the engine and then, bracing himself for a serious conversation, turns to look at Kurt.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” he asks, his voice coming out quieter than he’d intended.

Kurt looks neither surprised nor disgruntled. “Because… with school and the Warblers, I know you’ve already got a lot on your plate. I didn’t want to add any unnecessary drama to that.”

“It’s not unnecessary. That’s important. That’s big.” Blaine reaches out and puts his hand on Kurt’s shoulder. Whether unconsciously or not, Kurt leans into the touch. “How are you feeling?”

“Bewildered,” Kurt says, and then, “Bothered. Bewitched.”

Blaine smiles. “Wrong order.”

“God, have I told you lately how nice it is being around someone that actually understands my cultural references?”

“Yes, but you can always tell me again.”

Kurt curls his fingers together in his lap. Blaine can only see half of his face, the half facing the window, where a beam of light is slanting across his forehead, and he finds himself oddly entranced by the way it hits his eyes. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it.”

“Yeah?”

“I mean, it’s not like I was just biding time, waiting for something like this to happen. I honestly expected Karofsky to be there until he graduated. And it wasn’t just him. There were other bullies, too. It was a slow build up until the moment when he – he kissed me.” His voice still shakes when he brings it up, which is almost never, and Blaine feels a brief but newfound wave of hatred wash over him. “I wasn’t just leaving Karofsky behind. I was leaving homophobia and taunting. Or, at least, I thought I was.”

“I know,” Blaine says quietly.

“And Dalton has been an amazing reprieve from everything. I’ve never once been afraid to go into school in the morning.”

“But?” Blaine knows there’s one coming.

“But… I don’t know. Without Karofsky, they haven’t got anyone to light the torches or form the mobs. The news of his ‘coming out’ apparently spread like wildfire, so even the football players are realizing that his displays of blatant homophobia were because of… well. Something deeper.”

“And none of them want to be accused of the same.”

Kurt shrugs. “Right. Maybe. Either way, it’s a learning experience for them.”

Blaine tries for a smile but mostly fails. He’s glad it’s dark. “You’re starting to sound like me.”

“God forbid,” Kurt teases gently, still staring down at his intertwined fingers. “The thing is, it’s partly a matter of fitting in. Or not fitting in. And how some people are better at it than others.” He looks up, finally, his expression fraught with uncertainty. “I’ve never actually wanted to fit in.”

“I know,” Blaine says quietly.

“You do?”

Blaine can’t help but laugh at that. “Kurt Hummel, if anyone in the world was destined to stand out – it’s you.”

“Well, if the McQueen Armadillo Heels fit…”

Sobering up slightly, Blaine withdraws his hand from Kurt’s shoulder and curls his fingers back around the wheel instead. It’s getting late. Burt’s probably wondering where they are. “You miss McKinley, don’t you?”

Kurt leans forward, so the streetlamp’s light hits him the rest of the way, and he looks serious, thoughtful. “I miss the people.”

Blaine nods and idly plays with his keys, working up the courage to ask the other question that had been forming since he’d received the text from Rachel. He forces himself to do it. “You’re going back, aren’t you?”

Kurt freezes, and Blaine realizes with a complete lack of gratification that he’s finally managed to catch him off-guard. But he also knows it’s not something he hasn’t been thinking about, too.

After minutes that stretch into hours that stretch into years, Kurt nods. “I’m going back,” he says softly, and Blaine leans his head against the window and doesn’t tell him that he’s somehow known it all along.

***

Their coffee orders stay the same. The Lima Bean stays the same. Even the barista with the pink hair and nose piercing and a scary good memory stays the same. Blaine carries both cups and a muffin to split over to a table in the far corner, where Kurt’s peeling off his coat and draping it over the back of his chair.

“So,” Blaine begins, dropping down into the seat opposite him. He pushes one of the cups towards Kurt – it doesn’t matter which one, because he’s recently converted him to the wonders of the medium drip. “How was day one of your new life? Which is actually your old life.” He tilts his head to the side and considers. “Does this mean we’ve come full circle?”

“No.” Kurt gives him a look and stirs some sugar into his drink. “It will only be full circle when the football players form a line of worship and drop to their knees in reverence every time I pass them in the hallway.”

Blaine smiles. “You mean they don’t already?”

“Not quite. However, I did manage to go an entire day without a slushie to the face. I think we call that progress.”

After a sip of his coffee, Blaine breaks a quarter of the muffin off and offers it out to Kurt, who gives him a curt headshake that Blaine takes to mean “empty calories.” He shrugs and instead shoves the entire chunk into his own mouth. “So what was your tactic?”

Kurt pauses here, lips pursed to the side. “I… didn’t have one,” he says, with a sort of dawning comprehension that hadn’t been there two seconds before. “I didn’t _need_ one. With Karofsky gone, the football team seemed to be more subdued than usual. You know Finn told me a few of them actually came to Regionals?”

“ _Really._ ”

“Supposedly. Though, knowing their brain capacities, it’s possible they were just looking for the nearest Monster Truck Rally and got lost.”

Blaine laughs out loud at that. “My dad took me to a monster truck rally when I was eleven.”

“Oh God. I’m glad you managed to escape unscathed.”

“It wasn’t so bad.” He closes his eyes and thinks back, feeling Kurt’s curious gaze on him but choosing not to call him out on it. He knows he doesn’t talk about life pre-Dalton much. “I think I was more interested in the six different flavors of cotton candy, though.”

“Ah, pure spun rainbow-colored sugar. Just what every steroid-addled man needs to get him through the violence and grandeur of monster trucks.”

“Hey.” Blaine points an accusing coffee stirrer at him. “Judgey.”

Kurt smiles his apology. “I’m sure they were delicious. So how was day one at Dalton without me?”

Blaine looks at him, and then away. “It was… you know. Back to the same old. Chemistry is exceptionally more boring now.”

“I have to say, that’s one aspect of Dalton I don’t miss. The homework load at McKinley is so much more manageable. I don’t know how you got such good grades without ever actually, you know, studying.”

“Wes, mostly,” Blaine says without missing a beat. “He’s a lefty, and he doesn’t cover his answers during tests…”

“Why does anyone let you get away with anything?” Kurt murmurs, but he says it so fondly that Blaine doesn’t even bother pretending to take offense.

Gathering the rest of the muffin crumbs and scooping them into his mouth, Blaine chews thoughtfully for a moment. “What’re you doing tonight? Do you want to get dinner?”

“I swear, all you ever think about is food,” Kurt says back, teasingly. “But I can’t. I promised Mercedes I’d help her cat-sit.”

“Cat-sit? Really?”

“Her next-door neighbors are vacationing in Bermuda and – don’t give me that look, cats need special care and attention too!”

“Fine, fine.” Blaine holds up his hands in surrender. “What about tomorrow?”

Kurt gives him a flippant look, flapping his hand like it’s an obligation he’s not sure he wants to agree to. Blaine’s stomach does a stupid thing. Too much coffee too fast. “I suppose I can probably fit that into my schedule.”

“Mm, you’re too nice.” He crinkles up the muffin wrapper and shoves it into his mostly-empty coffee cup through the tiny opening at the top. “Can I give you a ride home?”

“I drove.” Kurt stirs the rest of his coffee around with one hand and looks at Blaine. “We’re coming from different schools now, remember?”

Blaine’s smile looks suspiciously like a frown. It’s a testament to Kurt’s character that he doesn’t call him out on it. Kurt’s return to McKinley is supposed to be a good thing. A happy occasion. And Blaine _is_ happy for him. He is. “Right,” he says, winding his scarf around his neck with too much concentration. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then, Kurt. Have a good day at school.”

Kurt takes too long buttoning his jacket. He doesn’t answer until all eight buttons are perfectly aligned in their holes, and even then, from underneath his eyelashes, all he says is, “You too.”

***

“Mr. Anderson.”

Blaine straightens and looks over his shoulder, pausing halfway through digging in his locker for a math assignment that he was positive he’d turned in yesterday. The corridor is busy but quiet, a gentle hum of conversation, the steady rustle of papers. Looking remarkably out of place in the crowded hallway is Mr. Kirkland, the gym teacher turned self-appointed hall patrol, and he’s got his arms crossed and his eyes narrowed. At Blaine.

Great.

“Yes sir?”

Mr. Kirkland advances on him, giving him the kind of look that would have terrified him as a freshman. Now, he can only find it vaguely funny, because this is the first time a teacher at Dalton has ever stopped him in the hallway, ever used that kind of tone with him. Until this moment, he wasn’t even sure Dalton teachers were capable of it. “Where,” Kirland says, very pointedly, “may I ask, is your tie?”

Blaine glances down, surprised. He’s got his dress shirt and his blazer and his recently-shined black shoes but, sure enough, no tie. He hadn’t even realized. He’d never made that mistake before. “I must have forgotten it at home,” he says, bringing his hand up to his neckline and clasping at nothing. No wonder he’d been able to breathe more freely today.

“I assume you know that’s against school policy.”

Blaine looks up. “I think I heard that somewhere, yes.”

It’s sort of amazing how thin Kirkland’s lips can get when they’re pressed together that tightly. “Four demerits,” he says, drawing a notepad and a pen out of his front pocket and scribbling furiously. The weirdest thing is that Blaine can hardly bring himself to care. Even though he knows he’ll have to empty a trashcan at the end of the week, he takes his punishment in stride and walks down the now-emptying hall, feeling very much like a demerit was worth it.

***

Kurt calls halfway through his English homework.

“You have separation anxiety, don’t you?” Blaine jokes by way of greeting, and Kurt makes a little hum from the back of his throat that means he’s not even going to dignify that with a laugh. What Blaine doesn’t say is that the shoe might be on the other foot. That he was the one that kept staring at the empty desk in the corner of the room during third period, as if he could somehow project Kurt back into his old seat. People come and go from Dalton. Blaine was once the new kid, just like he was once the kid who left. It’s never been like this before. He’s never had a friend like Kurt before.

“Azimio cornered me in the hallway after school today,” is what Kurt says instead, and Blaine’s spine stiffens automatically. A million terrible images flash through his mind. He forces himself to push them away, to wait before jumping to awful conclusions.

“Oh? What happened?”

“He said, and I quote, ‘Yo, Hummel, where’d you get that scarf? My girl’s been lookin’ for one exactly like that and her birthday’s coming up next week.’”

Blaine is silent for about three seconds before he laughs, relief bubbling up in his chest and spilling over without warning. “You’re kidding.”

“If I actually owned a Bible I’d swear on it.”

“That’s… wow,” Blaine says, shaking his head in disbelief. “So what’d you say?”

“Well, first, I told him the correct terminology was pashmina. But then I told him to try online shopping before he could beat me up for thinking ‘pashmina’ was a Russian insult.”

“Wow,” Blaine says again. “Apparently he’s taking Karofsky’s absence well.”

“Things are looking up,” Kurt agrees. “Meanwhile, Puck and Sam Evans sang a duet during Glee club today in which I’m absolutely positive they didn’t realize how homoerotic it sounded. I mean _really._ What is it with straight boys and their complete lack of social awareness?”

“Sam’s the blond one, right?” Blaine muses, tipping the phone between his shoulder and his ear and making doodles on his paper with his pen. “So what’d they sing? Something outrageously romantic? ‘Islands in the Stream?’” Before Kurt has time to answer, he breaks off into song, not caring who’s just outside his door or whether or not Kurt’s at home alone. “ _Baby when I met you there was peace unknooown…_ ”

“Blaine,” Kurt protests, “I will hang up this phone –”

“ _I set out to get you with a fine tooth comb!_ ” Blaine sings, ignoring him. “ _I was soft inside, there was something goooing on…_ Sing with me, Kurt.”

“You are ridiculous,” Kurt says, but he can hear the smile in his voice.

“ _You do something to me that I can’t explain_ – I’ll keep singing until you join me – _hold me closer and I feel no pain_ – you know you want to, Kurt – _every beat of my heart_ –”

“ _We got something going on,_ ” Kurt relents, joining in, trying to keep his voice tight with pure obligation but failing pretty obviously. Blaine grins into the phone.

“ _Tender love is blind,_ ” they belt together, probably sounding stupid and yet wholeheartedly unselfconscious. “ _It requires a dedication… All this love we feel needs no conversation, we ride it together –_ ”

“Blaine,” Kurt says, laughing, interrupting. “My dad’s yelling. I think I’m interrupting the football game.”

“Baseball,” Blaine corrects him, not even pouting about the fact that he’d cut them off before his favorite line of the whole song. Okay, maybe pouting a little bit. “And that’s probably a sign that I need to get back to my homework. TS Eliot’s not going to write about himself, you know.”

“Actually…” Kurt says, and Blaine snorts.

“I’m hanging up now.”

“Fine. I guess I should try to be a good son for a few minutes, anyway. It’s the least I can do, after the hours of paperwork he did so I could transfer schools mid-semester. Twice.”

“Good idea. Just remember, they’re not touchdowns, they’re homeruns.”

“I _know_ that,” Kurt says indignantly, and then, “But what’re the guys who toss the ball back and forth called?”

“The pitcher,” Blaine answers, chewing on the lid of his pin. “And the catcher.” Kurt laughs quietly on the other line and Blaine’s eyebrows arch, half-surprised, half-impressed. “Oh. I see what you did there. Goodnight, Kurt.”

“Goodnight, Blaine,” he says back, and they hang up the phone.

***

Blaine spends most of Wednesday’s Warblers practice staring at his hands. He hears the conversations taking place around him, but through some sort of vacuum, like he’s miles and miles away. He relinquishes his latest solo, to the surprise of his fellow Warblers. It’s a great song, but his heart’s not really in it.

They give the solo to Trent instead. He’s so happy he nearly cries.

***

Instead of driving separately, Blaine decides to pick Kurt up at his house before dinner. He doesn’t actually go to the door, though; his encounters with Burt Hummel have been few and far between, and he’s not feeling at the top of his game today. For some weird reason, he has the need to impress him. It’s probably just a parent thing.

Kurt looks at him appraisingly as he pulls the passenger door open. “Out of your school clothes already?” he asks, his eyes lingering for a moment on Blaine’s grey cardigan. “Be careful, Blaine Anderson, I might start to think you own more than one outfit.”

“Mm, it’s all an illusion.”

“I thought so.” Kurt buckles himself in and lifts his eyebrows teasingly. “Nothing’s ever as good as it seems.”

The short drive to Breadstix is practically second nature at this point. Blaine flicks the radio on, just for the white noise. They’re not actually paying attention to the music. He’d much rather talk to Kurt. Sad how much harder that was to do now than compared to two weeks ago. “How good do I seem, exactly?” he asks, fishing.

“Quit fishing,” Kurt says back.

“I wasn’t fishing.”

“You were.”

“Fine,” Blaine relents, because he’s never been good at lying. “Maybe I was a little.”

Watching Kurt rifle through the glove compartment for a tissue, Blaine wonders when the lines between them started blurring. He doesn’t remember a precise before and after. He remembers Kurt borrowing the handheld mirror in his locker (it was a gift from his mom – really, it was) and never returning it, and he remembers taking a drink from Kurt’s water bottle after school without asking permission. At what point did they stop paying for their own coffees? When did Kurt end up with Blaine’s spare tie?

Why hadn’t they kissed again?

Why weren’t they together?

“Are you okay?” Kurt asks, shaking him out of his thoughts. He found a tissue, apparently. Instead of blowing his nose with it, though, he just dabs it against his temple. “You look like you’re deep in thought.”

“Kurt,” Blaine says, pretending to look insulted. “I’m _always_ deep in thought.”

“Uh-huh, sure you are. Well, then, penny for your thoughts?”

“You think I’m only worth a penny?”

Kurt makes a big deal out of rolling his eyes. They both know he’s enjoying this. “A penny, two compliments, and three bites of my dinner at Breadstix.”

“Deal,” Blaine answers, right away. “Half now, half later. Let’s start with a compliment.”

“You’re a surprisingly decent driver, considering you never keep your eyes on the road.”

In fact, Blaine tears his eyes away from the road to narrow them at Kurt. “That was barely a compliment. There was an insult hidden in there. Doesn’t count.”

“And,” Kurt says, “I like your cardigan.”

Well then.

“Okay,” he says, repressing the sudden urge to smooth a wrinkle in said cardigan and gripping the wheel more firmly. “I was thinking about… asking you how things are really going at McKinley. You keep me up-to-date with what everyone else is doing, but not what _you’re_ doing. I want to hear about you.”

Kurt takes the question in for a moment, leaning back in his seat and pressing his lips together. “Well,” he says, “for the most part, really good. Everyone in Glee club welcomed me back with open arms… as open as they ever were, anyway. I didn’t expect to suddenly be best friends with everyone, you know? True, Santana called me a _gay_ tor – I’m assuming that’s a gay traitor – and Brittany seemed to think I’d just been stuck in detention for the last five months – but overall, it’s… like being home.”

Blaine’s stomach does that weird flippy thing again. He must be hungrier than he thought. “That,” he says, “is great news, and totally worth celebrating. Let me buy dinner tonight.”

“You bought last time,” Kurt protests, but Blaine silences him with a hand in the air.

“Please, Kurt. Don’t take this from me.”

Kurt laughs openly. “Okay, fine. As a favor to you.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome.”

The parking lot is as crowded as he’d expected it to be, for a Thursday night on the town. If anything in Lima actually counted as ‘on the town.’ Maybe on the suburb. On the village. “Can we play that game where we count how many minivans there are?” Kurt asks, peering out the window with disdain. “Because nothing gets my appetite going like a restaurant full of soccer moms.”

“You count minivans,” Blaine says, “I’ll count highwaters.”

“They only count if you can see sock. Bare ankle doesn’t cut it.”

They discreetly elbow each other the entire way into the restaurant, where the staff is beginning to recognize them by face. That should be embarrassing, but Santana and Puck both have their polaroids stuck to the wall behind the hostess’s table, so they don’t feel too bad.

“Table for two, please,” Blaine says, and the waitress gives them a dry look and says tonelessly, “Under the name Judy Garland again?”

“Um, no,” Kurt says, having the decency to look ashamed. “Just ‘Hummel.’”

Blaine looks up helplessly and says, “What, that’s not funny?”

“It was funny the first three times,” Kurt says, pacifying, but a smile’s peeking through.

At the table, Blaine slides into one side of the booth, and Kurt into the other, and he thinks about how he likes it better when there are other people with them, because then they can share the same side. Because it feels nice to be that close to someone. Because it’s a reassuring kind of awesome when you lean sideways and feel another person’s shoulder, another person’s arm. Accidental elbow brushes and –

“Blaine? You’re zoning out on me again.”

“Sorry,” he says. “It’s been a long day.”

“Oh?” Kurt orders waters for them both and then leans across the table, bracing his elbows in a way that doesn’t look rude. Blaine makes a note to study how he does that. It would put an end to seventeen years of scolding from his mom. “Why’s that? What happened today?”

“Well, I forgot to turn in a chemistry assignment. And I spilled an entire carton of milk at lunch. And English was so boring that I could’ve had a conniption fit and _that_ would’ve been improvement.”

Kurt winces in sympathy. “Ooh. Rough day.”

Blaine nods and pulls a sugar packet towards him. “Oh,” he adds conversationally, “and I quit the Warblers.”

“ _What?_ ”

One of the nicest things about Kurt is that he wears his emotions openly. Like now, for instance. If he’d told anybody else, they probably would’ve forced their jaws to stay undropped and their eyes to stay unwidened, and they would’ve agreed with him on principle, even before finding out what that principle was. Kurt doesn’t play along, though. He doesn’t make it easy for him. Blaine appreciates that more than he’s willing to admit.

“You did – what?!” Kurt says, nearly sputters, openly gaping at him.

“Quit,” Blaine says, trying to keep his tone lighthearted but failing. Miserably. Even his mouth feels heavy with the news, and it’s only been five hours. “The Warblers.”

“But you love to sing.”

“I do,” Blaine agrees. “I didn’t quit singing. I just –”

“Quit your only opportunity to do it and be heard by an audience,” Kurt fills in for him. “Sure. Makes complete sense.”

This, Blaine thinks, is one of the times when he doesn’t love Kurt’s honesty.

“To be fair,” he says, “you quit too.”

Kurt leans back and gives him a look. “Maybe. But my motive was pretty obvious. I had a reason to quit.”

“And you think I don’t?”

“I don’t know, Blaine. I can’t just guess what’s going on inside your head. I only know what you tell me.”

The waitress drops off their waters, completely oblivious to the mood at the table. Blaine pulls his glass towards him, grateful for the distraction. “Maybe it was a long time coming,” he offers, because he doesn’t want to be as translucent as Kurt seems to think he is. “Maybe you just got there first. I didn’t want to stand in your limelight. I didn’t want to be known as the guy who preempts Kurt Hummel.”

“That’s not funny,” Kurt says, not laughing, like he actually means it. Blaine thinks it’s funny. At least a little.

Sighing, Blaine drops his elbows onto the table in the way that his mom would totally yell at him for. “I’m just trying to figure stuff out right now, Kurt. And what I want… doesn’t align with what the Warblers want. It wasn’t fair to anyone if I stayed there, knowing that.”

“What _do_ you want?” Kurt asks, softening, and Blaine realizes that for possibly the first time, he doesn’t have an answer. So he doesn’t say anything at all.

***

Blaine spends the next two weeks going through the motions. Get up, get dressed in the same clothes as yesterday, go to school, wash, rinse, repeat. He’s never known the TV shows that were on at the 3 o’clock slot before. He realizes that he desperately needs a new hobby when he can name all five of the hot doctors on General Hospital. He lives for biweekly Lima Bean visits and Saturday nights downtown with Kurt. It’s all eerily reflective of his last few months at his old school, waking up tired, coming home tired, but this time, he doesn’t have an answer when his parents badger him about what’s wrong. He’s not being bullied. No one’s making fun of him for being gay. His fellow Warblers ( _ex_ -fellow Warblers) are just as friendly and pleasant with him as they used to be, even if it’s only out of moral obligation.

The only problem is that he’s not quite sure he can take it anymore. His parents aren’t surprised when, at last, he sets the transfer papers down on the kitchen table. There’s a déjà vu-inducing family meeting that night, but no one looks stressed, no deep conversations about _how can we do this?_ or, even, _**can** we do this?_. His dad jokes that they might be able to take that summer vacation they’ve been talking about for so long.

They don’t sign, though. Not yet. “We want you to be sure,” his mom says, and she’s the only one willing to show a little fretfulness in her eyes. “Remember how it used to be? How do you know it won’t be like that anymore?”

Blaine doesn’t have an answer for that. All he knows is that _he’s_ not like that anymore. He’s changed. For the better. He’s got old problems to atone for. It’s not going back as much as starting over. A second chance to do things right this time.

“The only thing I want you to promise,” his dad says, all serious business, “is that you’re not just doing this for a boy.”

He’s not doing it for a boy. The only thing he’s doing for Kurt is following in his braver footsteps. (And Kurt used to think _he_ was the brave one.)

“I’m not,” he swears. “I’m doing it for me.”

Two weeks after that, Blaine pulls his pressed Dalton blazer on for the very last time.

***

Kurt comes over Sunday night to “help Blaine with his outfit-making decisions.” Blaine feels the need to point out that he’s completely capable of dressing himself – in fact, he did it for the first eight years of his public school career – but Kurt’s so excited that he doesn’t have the heart to. Besides, he needs a little emotional support.

His parents are out, which is a relief; he loves them, he does, but his mom eyes every boy Blaine brings over like she’s already imagining the two of them sending ambiguous Christmas cards from South Beach and adopting Vietnamese children, and his dad walks past his bedroom door every five minutes for inane reasons, like wondering if Blaine had seen his favorite soup spoon lately (“top drawer, Dad, where it’s always been”) or, casually, if he thinks it looks like it’s going to rain.

Kurt sits cross-legged on Blaine’s bed and sifts through his stack of shirts critically. “Can I admit something?” he ventures, and Blaine spins his chair around from his position at the computer to really look at him.

“Go for it.”

There’s a green button-up on top of the stack; Kurt holds it up and squints at Blaine experimentally. “This would be good with your eyes,” he says, and then, getting to the point, “I kind of can’t believe this is actually happening.”

“What,” Blaine says, “you finally on my bed? No, I can’t either.”

Kurt throws the shirt at his face. “Not what I was talking about, jerk.”

“I know, I know.” Blaine clicks out of the Facebook game he was playing (Kurt absolutely hates that he plays those – that might be half the reason he only logs on whenever they’re together) and relaxes back in his seat, stretching out and propping his feet up on the mattress. “I kind of can’t believe it either.”

“You do realize that you’re doubling the gay population at McKinley, right?”

Blaine raises a closed fist in minority solidarity. “I do what I can to help the cause.”

“Oh, I have a suggestion.” Kurt waves in the general direction of Blaine. “This, what you’re doing right now? Try never doing that again.”

Lowering his hand, Blain scowls at him. “Always trying to stifle me,” he mutters, jokingly. “Trying to keep my people down.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“And yet you still want to spend every waking moment with me…”

Kurt rolls his eyes and goes back to sifting through clothing selections. “Are you nervous?” he asks, not looking up, and Blaine tilts his head in consideration.

“Yes,” he admits. “And excited. And scared.”

“That’s a whole lot of emotion for one person,” Kurt says, but Blaine just bares his teeth in a cheesy grin and says low, faux-seductive, “I’m a whole lot of man.”

Another eyeroll. “Maybe I _shouldn’t_ tell anyone that I know you.”

“Now that would just be cruel.” Blaine uses the heel of his left foot to scratch idly at the ankle of his right. He’s feeling so many things at once. Part of him is ready to jump out of his body, all restless energy and anxiety in his bones. It was like what he’d experienced before the first day at Dalton but tripled, because no one at Dalton used cuss words during school hours or pushed guys into lockers because they secretly wanted to kiss them. He’s not just opening himself up to new possibilities. He’s opening himself up to all of that. To endless potential, on both ends of the spectrum.

Gathering the hangers that didn’t make the first cut, Kurt carries them to the closet and then arranges them by their colors, starting with dark hues and then working his way to the whites. Blaine watches him silently, amazed. “So should I pick you up for school tomorrow?” Kurt says, not turning around from his careful concentration on his job, tongue poking just slightly out of his mouth.

“Mm, as nice as that’d be, I think maybe I should drive myself. Give myself some time to hyperventilate in the car before I walk in.” Kurt looks at him sharply and he flashes him a grin, to show he’s kidding. Mostly. “And I’m supposed to get my schedule arranged in the office first, anyway.”

“Fine. I’ll meet you at your locker, then?”

Blaine nods. “Number 123.”

“123,” Kurt repeats. “Sequential. I like it.”

“Careful, Kurt, your OCD is peeking through.”

Kurt ignores him. “And then you’re going to Glee club with me, right? I’ve already talked to Mr. Schuester about it.”

This, actually, is news to Blaine. He drops his feet to the ground and sits up a little more, eyebrows raised. “And?”

“And, well, after everything that happened with Jesse St. James” – Blaine curls his lips in a grimace; he knows Jesse St. James, knows that whole story – “he was understandably a little bit skeptical at first. But, then again, Regionals are over, so you have no motivation to sabotage, and he knows you’d be a valuable asset to the team and a great addition to everything we’ve begin preparing for Nationals.”

Blaine looks impressed. “I should hire you to write pamphlets about me,” he teases, and then swivels around, digging through his desk drawer for a pad of paper and a pen. “Can you repeat that, but slower?”

Kurt huffs out an exasperated sigh, which is how Blaine knows he’s walking on thin ice. (He would’ve known that anyway. His jaw tightens when he starts to get annoyed, even if it’s imperceptible to everyone else. He’s spent hours watching – and making – it happen.) “Here,” he says, moving forward and draping a soft blue shirt over his head. Blaine squints at him through an open buttonhole. “Wear this tomorrow. And, Blaine?”

He tucks the notepad away. “Yeah?”

“Remember: it’s hallway, not corridor. Anything in the cafeteria with ‘mystery’ as part of its name is inherently inedible. And, most importantly, no one, I repeat, no one at McKinley cares about the glee club.”

A careless shrug of the shoulders. At Dalton, no one had cared about football. (They didn’t even have a team.) These things happened. “We’ll see about that. They might not care _yet_ …”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Kurt mirrors his shrug and heads for the door; it’s getting late, and Blaine knows he has an entire moisturizing routine to begin. He pauses just outside, arms halfway into his jacket, and flashes Blaine a comforting smile. “Goodnight, Blaine. See you at school.”

***

Locker number 123 is suspiciously difficult to find. Cut through the lobby and turn left, and you’ve got lockers number 100 through 116, but if you turn right, they start at 140 and go upwards. Class schedule clenched painfully tight in his grip, Blaine makes two large and confusing circles around the first floor before giving in to his manly pride and poking his head in the guidance counselor’s office for help.

“Uh, hi,” he says, and she stops dusting her office chair – could leather chairs even attract dust? – to look up at him.

“Oh, hello!” she replies, in a chirpy upbeat voice. She peels her rubber gloves off and gives him a bright, tell-me-all-your-problems kind of smile. “How can I help you?”

“It’s just…” Blaine lifts his shoulders into a helpless shrug. “I’m new here, and I can’t find –”

“Blaine!” someone calls from behind him, and he cuts himself off mid-sentence and turns around. It’s not Kurt, like he’d maybe been expecting. It’s Rachel Berry, knee-length polkadot dress to prove it, and she appears at his side almost immediately. “Hi, welcome to your first day at McKinley!” she says, peppy and measured like maybe she was a high school tour guide in a past life. Clearly she’s been planning this. “Do you need someone to show you around? I can take it from here, Mrs. Pillsbury-Howell.” She leans into the office and whispers pointedly, with a sharp jab of her chin towards Blaine, “ _Ex-boyfriend,_ ” and he’s far too amused to correct her. The guidance counselor just nods in a sort of politely confused way as they depart. Rachel slides her arm into his.

“Kurt told us you were transferring. I couldn’t be more pleased,” she starts, taking his schedule out of his hand and scanning it quickly before veering them to the left.

“Oh really? Because I was afraid you might be upset about the new competition.”

“Competition?” She looks at him with such an air of feigned innocence that he has to laugh. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. We aren’t competitors now, we’re teammates. And besides –” They stop short, right at locker 123, so Blaine has to be at least somewhat grateful and impressed that she’d gotten them there that quickly (and he should’ve taken notes, because this is a part of the school he doesn’t recognize). “ –our voices mesh together very well, I think this could be very beneficial for Nationals.”

“Rachel,” he points out gently, like maybe he’s talking to a child, “I’m not even _in_ the glee club yet.”

“The keyword being _yet_. Really, all you have to do is show up at a meeting. Lauren Zizes became a member and we didn’t even find out for two months straight if she could actually sing.”

Blaine starts in on his locker combination. At Dalton, they didn’t have padlocks on their lockers. They didn’t _need_ padlocks on their lockers. Petty theft was about as common as student pregnancy. “So can she?” he asks, offhandedly.

Rachel waves a hand. “Unimportant.”

“Please tell me,” says a voice from behind them, an unmistakable voice, “that you’re not torturing Blaine already, Rachel.”

The two of them turn around in unison. Blaine’s smile widens. His stomach feels oddly warm. “Kurt,” he says, “hi.”

“I’m not _torturing_ him,” Rachel says defensively, “I’m showing him the ropes.”

“How very Mother Teresa of you.” Kurt leans against the locker next to his, locker 124, very effortlessly. He’s wearing some sort of Kurt Hummel trademarked outfit, and even though Blaine’s seen him in his normal clothes before, it’s still going to take some getting used to. Seeing him like that every day. He looks incredible.

“You look incredible,” Blaine says, and Kurt actually blushes.

“Oh,” he says, looking caught off-guard, but only momentarily. “Thank you. Artistic expression has done wonders for you, too.”

Blaine laughs and shoves his brand new books into his brand new locker. “Kurt,” he says, “you picked this out for me.”

“I didn’t say _whose_ artistic expression.”

“Right, right. How silly of me for thinking you’d actually try to pay me a compliment.”

“You look _nice_ ,” Kurt insists, but then his eyes flicker upwards. “Though I notice that you’ve, uh, really gone to town on the hair gel today.”

Blaine’s hand automatically goes up to his hair, carefully flattened against his head. He’d gone a little overboard that morning. Twice he’d started at a new school and been known as ‘the kid with really curly hair.’ He didn’t want to take any chances at shooting for three. It was smooth and flat and every single hair was in place. Until about thirty seconds ago, he’d thought it looked decent. “You don’t like it?”

“No, I do. It’s very New England prep of you. I’m surprised there’s no matching polo shirt or carefully-pressed khakis.”

“That’s tomorrow’s outfit,” Blaine shoots back, scrunching his nose at him.

“Boys, you’ll have to excuse me,” Rachel says suddenly, and Blaine starts, because he’d kind of forgotten she was actually there. “If I don’t go now, I won’t have time to practice a song in the bathroom before first period begins. I’ll see you both after school.”

They watch her flounce down the hall in silence for a moment, and then Blaine shakes his head and hangs his backpack in the locker. Kurt reaches out and straightens it. “I have no idea what I’ve gotten myself into, do I?” he says more than asks, and Kurt swings the locker door shut.

“ _No_ idea,” he agrees cheerfully, and they head off together down the hall.

***

The first day is mostly uneventful. A kid in his second period class leans over and whispers, “Did you do the homework from Friday?” and Blaine gives him a weird look and whispers back, “I’m new,” and the kid just lifts his eyebrows and goes, “Really? You weren’t here last week?” so that’s something. The girl beside him during fourth period plays Angry Birds the entire time, not even trying to hide it under her desk, but the teacher doesn’t seem to care. That would never fly at Dalton. Neither would what happens in the hallway in the middle of the day, which is Sue Sylvester body-checking two students into a locker and then striding past without a single glance back. She does give Blaine a curt nod and says, “Are you sure you’re not lost, new kid? The Shire is that way,” which may or may not have been spoken as a term of endearment, but he’s not sure, so he says nothing at all.

The best parts of the day are when he gets to see Kurt. They have third period together, which is awesome, even if he fails to write down anything the teacher says because he’s too busy watching Kurt interact with people who aren’t Dalton students, who aren’t as well-bred and well-mannered as the people he’s spent the past three years with. They eat lunch together, too, with Mercedes and Rachel. The conversations are buoyant and comfortable, from who said what in which class to the upcoming Tony Awards to who can rock a good pair of skinny jeans (final assessment: everyone). He’s disappointed when they have to split. The entire lunch hour had gone by in a flash.

They meet, again, at Blaine’s locker after the final bell. Kurt looks positive and cheerful, which is different from the casual nonchalance he’d come to expect after a full day of school. It might have to do with McKinley. Blaine has a sneaking suspicion it has more to do with him. (Or maybe, he thinks but doesn’t say, that’s just hopeful wishing.)

“So?” Kurt says expectantly, adjusting the strap on his messenger bag as he wanders towards him. “How’d the first day go?”

“It was oddly…” Blaine pauses and searches for a word. He thinks about how his math teacher had called him “Blair” four times, even though he’d corrected him after every occurrence, and about how the vaguely attractive boy next to him in English had drooled on his notebook. “Normal,” he finishes, confidently. “It was all oddly _normal._ ”

Kurt looks like he doesn’t know whether or not to smile about that. “Is normal good?”

“Kurt,” Blaine takes a moment to tug his backpack out of the locker and swing it over his shoulders, “normal is great. It was kind of like… Dalton was awesome, of course, but it was so idealistic. Sometimes…” His grin twists into something a little more unsure. “Sometimes it didn’t even feel real.”

“Well,” Kurt says, nodding slowly. He knows that better than anyone. He understands in a way that no one else can. “I can assure you, McKinley is very real. As real as plebeian high school in Ohio can be, anyway.”

“You, Kurt Hummel, are a snob.”

“I’m not a _snob._ I just have extremely refined taste.”

Blaine looks at him seriously, eyebrows drawn in. Kurt looks just as seriously right back.

“Snob,” Blaine says again.

“Underappreciated debonair.”

Blaine shakes his head and starts down the hall. “Snobby snob snob.”

“What are you, five?” Kurt calls, but he’s holding back a smile.

“No, I’m six. _And a half._ ”

“Is that how you measure your height, too?” Kurt hurries to catch up with him; they walk together, matching stride for stride, towards the choir room. The hallways are slowly emptying, with the sort of dying breath that only seven hours inside a classroom can exude. “Do you say you’re five-foot-four and a half?”

“Hey!” Blaine stops mid-step and wraps his hand around Kurt’s elbow, giving him a little shake. “Totally uncalled for. I am definitely at least five-foot-seven.”

“And a half,” Kurt smiles.

“And a half,” Blaine agrees. He doesn’t let go of Kurt’s elbow until two seconds too late. Kurt looks down at his fingers against the sleeve of his shirt, and then they lock eyes and Blaine drops his grip. “Sorry,” he says, probably unnecessarily.

“For what?”

“I… don’t know.” Blaine shakes his head and tries to make it look like a joke. He doesn’t actually know what he’s apologizing for, so he tries switching tactics. “Hey, Kurt. Make me a promise.”

Kurt looks uncertain, but not unwilling. “Yes?”

“Promise me that no matter what happens… you won’t make me sit next to Rachel Berry.”

“I promise.” Kurt draws a cross over his heart, as solemnly as possible, and then he leads them inside the room, where most of the other members have already assembled. Brittany’s got her legs draped over Artie’s lap; Tina and Mike seem to be splitting one seat between the two of them; Santana’s running her fingers through Sam’s hair but in a bored, idle kind of way, and he’s got his eyes closed like he’s a puppy being petted; Rachel is standing by the piano, shuffling through stacks of sheet music like it’s the most important task in the world; Puck’s numbering his abs out loud, and Lauren’s rolling her eyes after every single count; Mercedes is playing some game or another on her iPhone; Quinn’s not doing much of anything, just sitting there with her legs crossed at the ankle; and Finn’s staring at the ceiling like the answers to the universe are written there. Blaine’s pretty proud of himself for remembering all of their names. The first and only time he’d been introduced to the majority of them had ended in… not one of his finest moments.

Mr. Schuester calls attention to the club by clapping his hands. (It’s so similar and yet so completely different than Wes’s formalistic gavel. They’re not immediately silenced, like at Dalton. In fact, Puck finishes with abs number four through seven before deciding to turn his attention to the front of the room.)

“Hey,” Puck says, “it’s the kid from the party. Weren’t you the one mackin’ on Rachel?”

“Gross,” Santana says, sitting up straight. “Please, Puckerman. I just ate.”

So – not the greatest introduction.

“Guys,” Schuester says, raising a hand to silence them. “I’m assuming you all know Blaine Anderson. He’s just transferred from Dalton, so I think we need to be sure to give him a warm welcome.”

Instead of providing assistance, Kurt detaches himself from Blaine’s side and hurries over to sit next to Mercedes, two rows back. Blaine realizes after a second that he’s maybe supposed to say something. He looks at everyone. They all look back. “Um, hey,” Blaine says. “So, like Mr. Schuester said, I just transferred and –”

“Dude,” Puck interrupts, staring at him with squinty eyes. “I’m pretty sure I’d be able to find the hypotenuse of your eyebrows.”

“There’s a hypotenuse living in my basement,” Brittany says seriously.

Blaine looks around for help.

“Okay!” Mr. Schuester says, too fast, like he’s a little too used to that sort of thing. “We have a lot of work to do, so maybe we should –”

“Wait,” Santana says, leaning forward in her seat. “If Kurt’s boyfriend is joining –”

“I’m not –” Blaine starts, but she completely ignores him.

“—then that means we have fourteen members now.” She shifts her ruthless gaze over to Lauren Zizes, who Blaine mostly remembers because she’d challenged him to a wrestling match after his fourth (fifth? seventh?) shot of tequila that night. “Does that mean you’ll be quitting?” Santana asks, and if she’s trying to look upset about the possibility, she’s failing pretty spectacularly.

“Are you kidding? And miss out on all of this new eye candy?” Lauren says, without missing a beat. “After Kurt said he’d be transferring, I posted a picture of Blaine Downey Jr. on my Tumblr last night and almost immediately gained sixty new followers. No way, I’m in this for the long haul.”

“Wait,” Finn says, bewildered expression on his face. “Kurt, is Blaine your boyfriend now?”

“ _No_ ,” Kurt says hurriedly.

“I always thought you’d be into taller dudes,” Puck says, giving Blaine a skeptical up-and-down.

“Kurt’s a really good kisser,” Brittany says happily, and Blaine looks over at her, mouth falling open a little.

“Okay, okay, let’s get started,” Mr. Schuester cuts in, finally coming to Blaine’s rescue. He gives him a clap on the shoulder and then gestures for him to sit down, and, head still spinning just a bit, he climbs up and sits down on the other side of Mercedes. She gives him a comforting pat on the leg as Rachel clambers out of her seat, sheet music in hand. He leans forward to catch Kurt’s gaze, but Kurt just flashes him the briefest of shrugs, as if to say “I told you so.”

All in all, though. Not the worst first day.

***

Blaine’s second, third, fourth, and fifth days at McKinley pass smoothly. Almost too smoothly. He keeps bracing himself each morning for _something_ – a muttered comment, a sideswipe on the way to the cafeteria. But nothing happens. He sings a Journey song in Glee club (“the first of many,” Kurt whispers to him) and he learns a shortcut through the school on the way to English class. It’s a pretty successful week, to be honest. His mom calls him precisely five minutes after the final bell each day, and she asks how it was with a timid edge to her voice, like she’s been waiting for bad news for the past eight hours, but every day the only thing he has to report on is a good grade on a test or an extra-long practice, so he’ll be late getting home. She sighs outwardly at the end of each phone call. He hasn’t retconned to his old school. He’s not living each day in fear.

He even learns the protocol of Glee club pretty quickly. It’s nothing like it is at Dalton. If someone wants to sing a song here, for any reason whatsoever – Finn has serenaded two different girls in his first week, Puck keeps singing songs at Lauren with big, moony eyes – then they just go for it, and they do group numbers just because they’re fun, not because they’re rehearsing rigidly for Nationals for the next few months.

Blaine pulls Mr. Schuester aside after practice on Friday, and when he says, “So, um, about Nationals…” Schue looks at him half-distractedly and says, “You’re coming with us, right?” and Blaine blinks in surprise and says, “Well, I just thought – I haven’t really earned a spot…” and Mr. Schue nods and says, “Okay, then, Monday. You can sing on Monday. Earn your spot,” so Blaine only has one weekend to prepare.

He drags Kurt over to his house after his Friday dinner with his family. Blaine’s dad is sitting in his favorite armoire in the living room, watching a documentary on the History channel, and he glances up when the doorbell rings. “You didn’t tell us you were having friends over, Blaine,” he says, his voice clipped.

“It’s just Kurt,” Blaine says, pausing with his hand on the doorknob.

“Regardless, you still have to ask permission.”

His heart skips a beat or two with a surge of annoyance, but he forces it away. “Okay,” he says, “I’m sorry.” The doorbell rings again. Blaine plasters a smile onto his face and says, trying for some humor, “Hey, Dad, can Kurt come over?”

But by now his dad has gone back to his TV show. “Make sure you keep your door open,” he says, settling into the cushions. Blaine takes in a breath through his nose and opens the door.

“About time,” Kurt says impatiently, rubbing his hands together as if he’d been freezing. It’s in the 40s, at least, and Kurt’s wearing a big coat. It’s stupidly endearing, like most of the things Kurt does. Blaine grabs for his hand.

“I need your help,” he says, leading him up the steps. He doesn’t miss the way Kurt curls his fingers into his, fitting loosely, perfectly. He gives Kurt’s hand a little squeeze.

“With what? Not another hair dilemma, I hope, I left my emergency kit in the car –”

“No, nothing like that.”

He pulls Kurt into his bedroom. He knows that disobeying his dad and shutting the door would be stupid; he’d be up in a matter of minutes, armed with some dumb question and an overly distrusting gaze. Maybe he’d offer to check if the ventilation system was working again. Last time he’d managed to stick around for a whole twenty minutes under the thinly veiled guise of that excuse. So Blaine closes the door eighty percent of the way. Compromise, he thinks. That’s how it was done in the olden days.

“I’m singing on Monday,” he starts, turning to face Kurt.

Kurt looks blankly back at him. Polite, of course, but blank.

“Is this where I feign shock and awe?” he asks, one hand settling over his heart for good measure.

“No, come on, cut it out. I mean. In front of everyone. A sort of formal audition, if you will.”

Kurt’s expressions fogs over, a little more disgruntled than five seconds ago. “What? No one auditions. Not a single person in that room had to audition –”

“It’s not _really_ an audition,” Blaine cuts in, before he can go on a civil rights rampage. “And I sort of asked for it. I’m just kind of… nervous, is all. I wanted your help.”

“Blaine Anderson? Nervous? Did I hear that correctly?”

Blaine looks around for something soft to throw at him, but there’s nothing, so he settles for giving him the best impression of a scathing look that he can. Based on Kurt’s reaction, it probably falls somewhere between sleepy kitten and mildly annoyed chipmunk.

Darn him.

“Just sit here and tell me what you think of my song, okay? We have about seven minutes before my mom barges in here with a plateful of freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies, and there’s no getting rid of her easily.”

Finally, Kurt does as he’s told, climbing up into his usual position at the foot of Blaine’s bed. He tucks his legs underneath him. “So what song are you dazzling me with, Mr. Anderson?”

“Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?”

Kurt stares at him. “Excuse me?”

“The song,” Blaine laughs, mostly at the expression on Kurt’s face. “By Rod Stewart.”

“Right.” Kurt is adorable when he blushes. He’s most definitely blushing right now. “I knew that.”

“Feel free to answer the question, though,” Blaine says, and when Kurt gives a shrug of indifference, Blaine gives him a look that’s definitely on this side of angry raccoon. Improvement.

The CD player is already set up and cued. Blaine clears his throat and presses play before turning around to face Kurt. His parents are far too used to his impromptu bursting into song to come running. He figures they’ll leave him alone for a little while, at least until the music stops. The two of them, Blaine and Kurt, lock eyes while Blaine sings; it’s flirty, and upbeat, and Blaine gets into it, really into it, waggling his eyebrows at Kurt as he drops into the chorus. Kurt, sitting cross-legged, looks overly amused.

There is a moment, right near the end of the song, where Blaine has an impulsive feeling that he’s had many times before. He doesn’t know what prompts it, exactly. The fact that they’re alone in his bedroom. The fact that Kurt keeps his eyes trained on him, intently, even when he’s making ridiculous faces and singing ridiculous lyrics. The fact that Kurt both looks and smells really, really good, even when he’s not trying. (Or maybe he is trying. He can’t be too sure.) The thing is, Blaine wants to kiss him. Like, he _really_ wants to kiss him, because he knows how good he is at kissing, and he can hardly think of a reason not to, except –

Except the thing with first kisses is that they don’t always lead to second kisses, no matter how badly you want them to. The one and only kiss they’d shared had immediately been the best kiss Blaine had ever gotten. (In all honesty, he hasn’t had as many as some of his friends seem to think he’s had. He doesn’t ever bother correcting them, though. No harm, no foul, right?) Sometimes Blaine is a go-getter. Sometimes he talks to his friends’ parents behind their backs, and sometimes he sings stupid songs to curly-haired boys in public places. Blaine knows that he does a fine job at acting like he’s got it all together, and that most of the time, he can fool even himself. He can be confident, he can be self-assured. He can make an amazing cheese omelet.

But he can’t make Kurt kiss him.

That kiss had been amazing. That, he knew, was not one-sided. Kurt had even whimpered a little when they finally pulled away, quiet and low, from the back of his throat, and it was the hottest noise Blaine has ever heard in his entire life. _Ever._ Kurt had held his hand and Kurt had hugged him, and Kurt had looked for a second too long when he’d changed pants after Warblers practice that one time. (For the record, he’d kept his boxers on.)

But he still hadn’t kissed him.

Blaine had been the one to make the conscious decision not to kiss Kurt again. Not to assume that they’re in some sort of relationship of the ages just because they’d had the best kiss since _The Notebook._ (Blaine tells everyone that he hates that movie, but he owns a copy and keeps it hidden on the second shelf in his closet, right next to the pornos that would give his dad an aneurism should he ever stumble across them.) You don’t just jump into relationships with people. Especially when they’re your best friend, or, the closest thing you’ve ever had to a best friend. If Kurt wanted something more – he could take the initiative – he’s never been shy about what he wanted –

So they’re not dating, and they haven’t even kissed since that first time, which is okay. He likes being Kurt’s friend too much to really jeopardize it. Because they are. Friends. It’s not a bad arrangement. Not at all.

And even though Blaine wants to kiss him, especially now, he doesn’t. Instead, he finishes the song with as much cheese as he can muster and drops down to his knees in a grand flourishing gesture, and Kurt laughs and claps politely.

Blaine reaches for Kurt’s foot. “Well?” he asks, breathing hard, giving it a little shake. He’s not sure if he’s asking for judgment on the song, or on him.

“You,” Kurt says, answering both, “are phenomenal. Truly an inspired performance. Also possibly the gayest thing I’ve seen since Brokeback Mountain.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Blaine shoots back, dropping Kurt’s foot and climbing back to his feet. He collapses onto the bed next to Kurt, sprawled out, hands pillowing his head, legs dangling over.

Kurt rests his hand flat against Blaine’s chest, innocent, for just a brief second. “Not at all,” he says. “That was actually the biggest compliment I could’ve ever given you.”

There’s a sudden noise from the hallway. Blaine lifts his head and sees his dad hovering by the door, arms crossed. Kurt’s hand mysteriously disappears from his chest. “Boys,” his dad says in greeting. “Kurt, how are you?”

“I’m doing fine, Mr. Anderson, yourself?”

“Doing well, thanks.” He leans against the doorframe. “Your mother wants to know if you boys want a snack.”

“We just had dinner an hour ago,” Blaine points out.

“Didn’t ask if you wanted a meal, just a snack. She was thinking about making popcorn.”

“We’re fine, Dad. But thanks.”

His dad nods and strokes his beard for a second. “You guys want to watch some TV?” he asks. “There’s a documentary about UFOs and extraterrestrials coming on in a minute.”

“Mm, tempting, but I think we’re going to sit this one out.”

“Maybe next time,” Kurt offers, in that trying-to-be-friendly way of his. Blaine smirks a little at his effort. “I love me a good alien documentary.”

Blaine’s dad smiles, legitimately smiles, for the first time since Kurt had gotten there. “Me too,” he agrees, “I watched one the other day about Area 51 –”

“On the Discovery Channel? My dad and I watched that too. Pretty fascinating, right?”

“Completely fascinating, there’s some weird stuff in this world that we don’t know about. I’ve got a pretty good one saved on the DVR if you’re ever over and get bored.” His dad nods and then he turns and heads for the stairs, saying over his shoulder as he goes, “Well, you two have fun, let me know if you need anything.”

Blaine can’t help but be a little bit amazed by Kurt. Sine when had one of his guy friends ever managed to charm his dad that quickly, that effortlessly? He shakes his head in wonderment and nudges him in the shoulder.

“Kurt,” he tells him, seriously, “I think my dad just developed a crush.”

***

Monday’s performance goes just as smoothly as that night in his bedroom, except he tones it down a little, doesn’t stare at Kurt the entire time. Everyone gets really into it; they jump to their feet and join him on the floor in the chorus, singing and dancing and laughing. Blaine even gives Kurt a little twirl near the end, and no one notices, or if they do, no one cares.

Afterwards, Mr. Schue claps him on the shoulder and says, pleased, “Welcome to the glee club, Blaine,” and it feels really, really good to be a part of this. A part of them.

***

News travels fast in a public school. That’s one thing Blaine doesn’t forget, doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to forget. High school is just one big freakishly inbred subculture, and McKinley is no exception. But his first week had gone so well, so swimmingly, that he’d started to believe that the ret of his high school career could be like this. Well-liked and well-adjusted. A member of the Glee club. Headed to Nationals in the spring. Maybe he would try out for the soccer team next year, get to know a few of the more athletic guys –

But the athletic guys at McKinley are far different from the athletic guys at Dalton. These guys have biceps twice the size of Blaine’s head. They walk through the hallways and the other students part like Moses and the Red Sea. (A stupid metaphor, but Blaine thinks it every time.) He almost, almost strikes up a conversation with one of the football players in homeroom, but when Blaine opens his mouth the guy shoots him one of the filthiest looks imaginable, and Blaine clears his throat and pretends he was only doing mouth exercises instead.

Fine, he thinks. He’ll just stay out of their way.

And because Kurt had warned him that no one at McKinley cared about the Glee club – a fact which proves itself more true each day – Blaine doesn’t think anyone actually knows that he’s a member. It’s unremarkable. Unimportant.

How wrong he is.

Tuesday, after his last class of the day, he’s one-armedly wrestling books into his backpack when he hears them. He’s still thinking about calculus functions and Shakespeare’s poems and what he’s going to have for dinner, so it takes a few seconds for his brain to catch up. “Hey,” someone calls out, deep-voiced and manly. “Hey. Short dude.”

With a sense of foreboding, Blaine looks up. That’s a nickname he’s heard before. It’s Azimio, the one Kurt’s told him about, and two other football guys. They’ve got each got one large Styrofoam cup in hand, which is not that unusual, but none of them are drinking out of them, which is.

“Hi,” Blaine says, drawing himself up, back stiff with uncertainty. “What can I do for you?” He’s been waiting for this moment. He knew, deep down, that it was inevitable. That homophobes didn’t always learn their lesson and move on to be better functioning members of society. That high school bullies were still high school bullies, even if they put their behavior temporarily on hold. He’s ready for them. He thinks, vaguely, that expecting them makes it easier. He’ll be impressed if they can find a gay joke he hasn’t heard before.

“We’ve got a tradition at this school, prissy boy,” Azimio says, and they advance on him, cups raised. “Welcome to the Glee club.”

All at once, Blaine is hit with three different flavors of ice-cold Slushie, so fast he doesn’t have time to brace himself for it, and they explode against his face, his chest, his hair, his ears with the sharp pain of some sort of external brain freeze. Blaine can’t stop himself from gasping as it drips into the collar of his shirt, but, weirdly enough, what he can’t stop himself from thinking is _that’s it?_

The football players had tossed their now-empty cups carelessly onto the ground and strode past, exchanging high-fives as they went.

That’s it?

No offensive jokes, no shoves to the chest, nothing about his sexuality at all? That’s it? That’s _not_ it, though, because once the shock of that wears off, he realizes that the Slushie is every bit the ten kinds of miserable Kurt had told him about. His nostrils are burning and his shirt is drenched in purple stickiness. He stands there, frozen, for a moment, not sure what he’s supposed to do.

“Oh man,” says a voice from behind him, and Blaine slowly turns around. It’s Finn. Not exactly the white knight he’d imagined, but comforting all the same. “They got you, huh?”

Blaine’s teeth are chattering without him even realizing. “They did,” he responds, watching the juice drip down and splatter against the tile floor, “in various colors and sizes. They must’ve been having a sale.”

Finn shakes his head, and then he reaches for Blaine’s shoulder but thinks better of it, considering his shoulder now smells like fruit-flavored gas station. “Well, now you’ve got the first one over with,” he offers, with a trying-to-be-helpful smile. “Now you know what to expect.”

Blaine can’t fathom this happening _again._ He thinks already thirty-five percent of his body is numb. “Silver lining,” he says, though, flicking ice away from his backpack.

“Come on.” Finn motions towards the locker room at the end of the hall; for lack of better prospects, Blaine follows after him. “Do you have spare clothes?”

So that’s what Kurt had been implying. He’d just sort of assumed Kurt wanted him to stash an extra sweater in his locker in the off chance their outfits clashed. This, he realizes, made much more sense.

“No,” Blaine admits, looking sadly at his ruined-forever polo shirt.

Finn nods. He pulls open the door and steps aside to let Blaine through first. “Go turn the sink on,” he instructs, like this is all second nature to him, heading over to the locker that is presumably his, if the _QB_ sticker on front means anything. Blaine does as he’s told, though bewilderedly, testing out the temperature with his fingertips while Finn digs through what is simultaneously the messiest and most confusing locker Blaine has ever seen. (Why, for instance, is there half a copy of _Lord of the Flies_ , and, behind that, a plastic cow figurine?)

“Where’s the rest of the book?” Blaine asks, for conversation’s sake, letting the water warm up.

Finn furrows his eyebrows. “Huh?”

“ _Lord of the_ – nevermind.”

“Here.” Finn looks triumphant as he tugs a slightly-wrinkled tshirt out of a plastic bag in the back. He holds it up. _McKinley Football_ , it says. _2009._ It’s huge.

“Um.” Blaine doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be reacting to. “It’s nice,” he says, after a beat.

Finn ignores his look. “It’s for you,” he explains, crossing over to the sink. “Here, you should –” He gestures to the running water with one hand. “You want to get it out of your hair before it kind of… gels. Especially considering, you know, how much gel you already have in there. If you wait too long you’ll be smelling it for weeks.”

“It’s not the worst smell I’ve ever smelled,” Blaine points out, but he bends his head regardless, inserting his hair into the water. Finn stands around awkwardly while he rubs at his curls. The curls he’d tried so hard to keep plastered to his head. His hand feels goopy with hair product and syrupy sugar. “I haven’t worn my hair curly since freshman year,” Blaine tells him, but since he’s speaking into the sink, it comes out muffled and echo-y.

“What?”

“I said –” Blaine shakes his head, giving up. The warm water feels good against his scalp. He splashes some of it against the stickiest parts of his cheeks, his neck.

“You missed a spot,” Finn says, and Blaine meets his gaze in the mirror before cleaning off that spot, too. He admittedly doesn’t spend a lot of time around Finn Hudson, because when he goes over to Kurt’s house, he’s usually holed up in his bedroom. (“Probably looking at porn,” Kurt had explained with a grimace.) But still. This wasn’t the sort of thing he would’ve expected.

When he’s fairly sure most of the Slushie has disappeared down the drain, Blaine shakes the excess water away and straightens. Finn holds out a somehow magically-procured towel. “It’s mine,” he explains after a minute. “But I haven’t really used it yet, it’s not…”

Blaine takes it, half grateful, half a little weirded out. “Thanks,” he says, running the towel over his face first, and then through his hair. He doesn’t point out that it smells like stale corn chips. “For everything. I mean. You didn’t have to –”

“Yeah, I did.”

“No, seriously.”

“No, I know. I did.” Finn looks so earnest that Blaine doesn’t know what to say. Finn shrugs. “You’re a member of the Glee club now. We all have each other’s backs.” He hands him the tshirt and points to one of the closed-doored stalls. “And, besides. You’re. You know. Kurt’s…”

“Friend,” Blaine supplies for him, amused.

“Sure. Friend.” Finn doesn’t look like he believes him; Blaine’s not all too upset about that. “And you’ve been the best – _friend_ – Kurt’s had. You’ve been really good for him. Everyone thinks that.”

Blaine curls the shirt up in his fist. He’s slightly taken aback. “They do?”

“Yeah. He’s a lot happier now than he used to be.”

“Karofsky’s gone,” Blaine says, pointedly.

Finn shrugs again. “Yeah, but he was happy before that. He’s been pretty happy since he met you.”

There’s a pause.

“I’m glad,” Blaine says finally, looking down. “Kurt deserves to be happy.”

“Yeah.” Finn’s starting to look a little uncomfortable; extensive talk about feelings, outside his area of expertise. Blaine feels bad for him, so he drops it. “You should probably change,” Finn says, gesturing again to the stall. “We’re late. Schue’s probably wondering where we are.”

Blaine hesitates. As nice as the gesture is, he’s not sure he should. He’s a practical guy. And he doesn’t want to make things harder for other people than they have to be. “Finn, this is cool of you and all, but do you know what it’s going to look if we walk out of the guys’ locker room at the same time, with my hair wet and wearing your clothes?”

Judging by the expression on Finn’s face, he _hadn’t_ considered that. But a minute later, he shakes his head. “I don’t care, man.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure.” Finn drops down onto one of the benches, waiting for him to change. “Puck steals my shirts all the time. This is no different.”

That, Blaine thinks, is one of the best things he could’ve said. Finn might have a long way to go, a lot to learn, but at least he’s trying. He’ll make it a point to tell Kurt later. He knows that the majority of it has got to be his doing, anyway. Blaine nods and disappears into the bathroom stall, shrugs his soaked shirt off, drapes it over the door, and then pulls on the grey tshirt loan from Finn. He swims in it. It hits halfway to his knees, and the sleeves stop just short of his elbows. He knows he probably looks ridiculous in it, but then, it’s better than being sopping wet and purple. Probably. He pushes the door back open.

Finn looks at him for half a second and snorts out a laugh that he almost tries to turn into a cough, but fails.

“Oh, come on,” Blaine says, beelining straight to the mirror. “It’s not my fault you’re freakishly tall.” He stares at his reflection for a second or two. His hair. His hair was… unruly. Messy. He hadn’t worn his hair without product in so long that he’d almost forgotten just how crazy the curls could be. He looked ridiculous. And, worst of all, he didn’t have any spare gel in his locker.

“You ready?” Finn asks from behind him. “You can put your shirt in that laundry pile over there, but I don’t know when that actually gets washed. And also…”

“It’s pretty much unsalvageable. I know.” Blaine grabs his backpack and heads for the door of the locker room, rolling the sleeves up as he walks. He glances at Finn out of the corner of his eye. “Thanks,” he says, meaning it. “Again.”

“No problem.” Finn trails after him, taking long, easy strides. He clears his throat and jams his hands into his pockets. “You going to keep up with March Madness?”

Blaine laughs. “Of course I am,” he says, and Finn looks impressed, like he hadn’t actually expected him to say yes. “I’ve got thirty dollars riding on my bracket, so…”

“No kidding? Maybe we should watch the games together sometime.”

Imagining the two of them, sharing a couch, talking basketball over handfuls of popcorn – it’s _weird_ , but it’s not the worst image in the world. Blaine doesn’t have many friends who’re into sports. Sometimes he and the Warbler boys would watch golf tournaments on ESPN, but then, that hardly counts. “Yeah. Definitely. That’d be awesome.”

“Kurt makes a really good cheeseball,” Finn says.

“I like cheeseballs.”

“I like pretty much any food with cheese in it. Actually, no. I like pretty much any food period.” Finn tips his head to the side, thoughtful. He puts his hand on his stomach as if simply talking about food has made him hungry. “I just really like to eat.”

“We,” Blaine says, stopping short just outside the music room, “have quite a bit in common, my friend.”

Finn grins at him and motions for Blaine to enter first. They’ve apparently already started, because there’s a steady buzz of chatter that fades into silence when they walk in. Blaine can practically feel thirteen pairs of eyes flicker from his hair to the shirt, and maybe back to the hair again. Puck, of course, is the first to speak.

“Whoa, dudes, have a little after school rendezvous in the showers?” he says, wiggling his eyebrows at them suggestively.

“Oh God,” Kurt says next, his palm pressed flat against his forehead, “oh God, someone pinch me, my greatest fears are materializing right in front of my eyes –”

Sam Evans leans over and, presumably trying to be helpful, pinches him in the arm. Kurt lowers his hands and glares.

“Hey, Finn, why didn’t I get one of your tshirts after we did the dirty?” Santana asks, half-smug and half-insulted. Rachel very pointedly looks down at the floor.

“You took three of mine,” Brittany tells Santana, and Blaine’s eyes widen slightly, but before any of his questions can be answered Puck’s talking over everyone, again, saying, “All these opportunities to switch teams and you wait until this kid arrives? First my boy Kurt, now my boy Finn? What kind of magical sex powers do you have, Anderson?”

“Blaine got Slushied,” Finn says, very loud and very fast.

The talking stops at once. They all wince in unison, in solidarity. Blaine feels a weird sense of belonging.

“That sucks,” Sam says, shaking his head, “I can’t even walk past the Slushie machines at 7/11 without having post-traumatic flashbacks.”

“My mom bought me a Slushie once and I screamed so loudly that my dad thought someone murdered me,” Tina adds, sympathetically. “He actually called 911.”

“I like the blue ones,” Brittany says happily. “They taste like Smurfs.”

Lauren Zizes, on the other hand, gives a casual shrug. “I still like Slushies,” she says, but then, Blaine can’t imagine anyone throwing a frozen drink at her and not fearing for their own life. Lauren Zizes is kind of a badass.

“Okay, that explains the shirt,” Puck says, “now what about the hair?”

“Seriously, how did you manage to hide all of that?” Mercedes asks, gesturing towards his hair. Blaine unconsciously lifts a hand to try and flatten it back against his head. She looks at him thoughtfully, scrutinizing. “Actually, I kind of like it this way.”

“Yeah, you almost have as much hair on your head as Finn’s mom has on her back,” Puck smirks, and Finn shoots a quick, “Shut up, dude,” at him before finally, finally Mr. Schue intervenes.

“Okay guys, enough,” he says, and places a hand on Blaine’s back that he’s pretty sure has to do with being the new gay kid more than being the new Glee kid, but it’s nice enough all the same. “Are you okay?” he asks, sincere.

“I’m fine.” Blaine tugs ineffectively at his shirt. “I hear it’s practically a rite of passage, anyway.”

“Damn straight,” Mike Chang says, and Blaine smiles a little. “You are now officially one of us.”

“The jury’s still out on whether or not that’s a good thing,” Quinn tells him, and he lets out a laugh.

Either way, it feels pretty good to him.

***

Blaine means to go home after school, except somehow he ends up squeezed next to Mercedes in an ice cream parlor booth somewhere just outside of Lima. He’s not sure how he got from Point A to Point B, but she’d paid for his cone – chocolate chip cookie dough, his second favorite – so he’s not really complaining. Maybe it’s just a ‘get to know your best friend’s new best friend’ thing. Maybe she, like Rachel, is harboring an undeniable attraction to him and thinks the only way to win him over is with food. Or maybe she just wants the chance to interrogate him outside the earshot of Kurt.

When she starts the conversation with “So why exactly haven’t you asked Kurt to be your boyfriend yet?” he’s pretty convinced it’s the latter.

Blaine nearly chokes on a chunk of cookie dough (who knew ice cream could be a health hazard?) and coughs it back down before actually taking her question seriously. “I…” He looks at Mercedes, who is waiting patiently for his answer. “Why are you asking me that? Has he said something?”

Mercedes rolls her eyes. “Of course he’s said something. He’s Kurt. Have you ever known that boy to bite his tongue?”

She has a point.

“What did he say?” Blaine asks, feeling just a little self-conscious. He was very rarely self-conscious. He didn’t much like this newly discovered side of himself.

“What kind of friend would I be if I told you that?” Mercedes licks around her own strawberry cone. Blaine pouts a little, but she ignores him. “Kurt didn’t tell me to ask you that, if that’s what you’re wondering. In fact, he’d probably kill me if he knew.”

“So you take it upon yourself to play matchmaker.”

Mercedes shrugs. “It’s better than staying home and watching _Bad Girls Club_ reruns. Look, I really care about Kurt. And I know you do too. I just – I see the way you two look at each other, and I guess I don’t understand why you’re not together.”

Blaine glances down at his hands. “I don’t know if Kurt’s ready for a relationship…”

“Oh really?” Mercedes can give him a mean look when she wants to. Blaine actually has to force himself not to crawl under the table and hide. “Then when will he be? After graduation? When he’s thirty? I know things with Kurt are different. You have to move slow around that boy sometimes. But he can handle it. He can handle _you._ ” She stops and takes a small bite out of her cone, and they chew in companionable silence for a moment.

“He likes you, Blaine,” she adds, after a beat. “And you don’t have to be afraid about that.”

They don’t talk about it anymore, after that. They talk about silly, inane things. Friend things. Blaine holds the door for her when they leave, and he makes a mental note to ask Mercedes out for ice cream more often, and next time, he thinks, he’ll pay.

***

Kurt invites Blaine over for Friday dinner that week, which is pretty significant for a number of reasons: 1) it’s the first time he’s invited him for Friday dinner, because he’s pretty sure that up until now it’s been a family-only occasion; 2) he informs him that he’s volunteered the pair of them to do the cooking, and Blaine has yet to tell Kurt that he’s actually not very good at cooking at all; and 3) it’s Ohio State’s first game in the March Madness tournament, and somehow, weirdly enough, he and Finn have planned to watch it together.

It’s more an accident than a plan, to be honest. Finn’s lacing up his tennis shoes when Blaine comes over, and he glances up, confused, and goes, “Oh, you’re hanging out here tonight?” and Blaine nods his confirmation and says, “Yeah, Kurt asked me over for dinner,” and Finn asks, “Are you going to stick around and watch the game?” and Blaine doesn’t really have anywhere else to go, because watching sports with his own father isn’t nearly as fun as it should be, so he shrugs and says, “Sure, why not?” and Finn unties his shoes and kicks them aside like he’s deciding to stick around after all.

First, however, Kurt ushers him into the kitchen. “Here,” he says, shoving a brightly-colored apron at him, “wear this.”

Blaine looks at it appraisingly. “What, did they run out of my size in the men’s department?” he asks, but he puts it on anyway. At least he’s not alone in his ridiculousness. Kurt’s apron is matching, except his has floral prints. They are united in their apparel misfortune.

“Smells good,” Blaine says, once he’s tied it correctly in the back. He feels like a less-crazy Paula Deen. “What’re we making?”

“Vegetarian lasagna with cucumber salad and garlic bread. I already put the lasagna in the oven – can you chop up some cucumbers while I get everything else ready?”

Pleased to have been given a relatively simple task, Blaine hunts down a knife and cuts the cucumber into little slivers. Maybe he’ll get through this night without Kurt realizing that everything he tries to bake ends up burnt and that he can just barely boil water, on a good day. Over by the sink, Kurt’s going to town on some tomatoes.

“Hey Kurt.”

Kurt looks over. “Yes?”

“Why’d you invite me tonight? I mean, not that I don’t appreciate it, but I thought Friday was for family.”

He goes a little pink, maybe, and goes back to concentrating on his tomatoes. “I just thought you might want to come over for dinner. It beats listening to Dad and Finn talk about homeruns and three-pointers for two hours straight. Carole and I needed someone else on our team.”

Blaine pops a cucumber square into his mouth and chews thoughtfully. “I guess I’m just surprised you haven’t gotten sick of me yet. We see each other all the time now.”

Kurt lifts an eyebrow. Blaine can tell he’s doing that without even glancing over. It’s something about the inflection in his voice. “Is that a bad thing?”

“That is definitely not a bad thing,” Blaine says quickly, honestly.

There’s a short-lived silence while they work on the salad. “I could never get sick of you,” Kurt says after a moment, pushing the freshly chopped tomatoes to the side.

Blaine smiles and doesn’t say anything.

He doesn’t need to.

***

At the dinner table, conversation is fluid and easy. Burt asks about school; Carole asks about his parents. Finn regales the table with a locker room story, but Carole cuts him off when she deems it no longer ‘family appropriate.’ Finn points out that Blaine’s not a member of the family. Burt says he’s been hanging around so much lately that he ought to be, and even though he says it like a complaint, he shoots him a secret wink to show that he clearly doesn’t actually mind.

Kurt brushes his foot against Blaine’s under the table. Maybe it was an accident at first, but five minutes later it’s still there, his toes softly pressed against Blaine’s shin, and that, that can’t be an accident at all.

***

The game starts at precisely 8:05. Finn shoos Blaine into the living room so they can be in their seats for tip-off; Kurt rolls his eyes and calls at their backs, “It’s fine, totally fine that I cooked, I guess I’ll do the dishes, too!” and Finn misses his sarcasm completely and calls back, “Great, thanks, Kurt!”

Blaine resolves to give him a hand in the kitchen at every timeout and commercial break. That makes him feel better.

The game is exciting, because it’s the first, but it’s not that exciting, because they’re playing a team that’s essentially a no-namer, and Ohio State pulls ahead pretty early on. Kurt joins them in the living room sometime during the first half, except he makes bored, deadpanned comments every two minutes until he finally gives up with a sigh. “I can’t take this anymore,” he announces. “Enjoy your Neanderthal sporting events, I’ll be downstairs watching _quality_ entertainment.”

He stands up and looks at Blaine pointedly. Blaine knows the proper thing to do would be to join him in the basement, but – it’s Ohio State. “I’ll come down right after the game ends?” he offers as a sort of compromise, and Kurt rolls his eyes yet again and leaves.

Finn watches him walk away and waits until the door is safely closed behind him before turning towards Blaine. “Rachel does that too,” he says in a half-whisper.

“Does what?”

“Dramatically storms out of a room when she doesn’t get her way.”

“Kurt wasn’t –” Blaine starts to defend him, but then realizes yeah, he totally was. They laugh together, but quietly, like they both feel guilty for doing so.

“Rachel also made kitten calendars with your face on them, I hear,” Blaine says, because even though playing yours-is-worse-than-mine in regards to actual _people_ is terrible, he still feels a little justified.

Finn glances at him over the top of his Mountain Dew bottle. “Kurt had your picture hanging in his locker,” he fires back.

Blaine’s eyes widen slightly. “He did?”

“He did. He took it down, like, two days before you transferred.” Finn looks a little more panicked all of a sudden. “But you can’t tell him I told you that. Seriously. He’s still got blackmail on me for the mayonnaise incident –”

“The mayonnaise incident?” Blaine doesn’t know whether to be intrigued or repulsed.

Finn, however, just shakes his head and edges the volume up on the television. “Don’t ask.”

After a quarter of a bag of potato chips and an easy Ohio State victory and a conversation ranging from foot fungus to Nintendo 64, Blaine dusts the crumbs off his pants and stands up. Finn follows suit, switching the TV off. “I better go find Kurt,” Blaine says, nodding in the direction of the basement door.

“Good luck, dude,” Finn says. “Whenever Rachel got pissed at me, I’d suggest watching a musical or singing about our feelings or something, you might want to try that.”

Blaine laughs. “Thanks,” he says, bracing himself like a soldier going into battle. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

***

Most of the lights in the basement are turned off. Blaine has to blindly navigate himself around a chaise lounge, a computer desk, and a full-length mirror that Kurt had found at a thrift store once and had Blaine carry the two miles home because it wouldn’t fit in the back of his car. Luckily, Blaine knows his way around the room. There are so many things about Kurt that Blaine has committed to his memory.

The way he looks when he’s half-asleep, bathed in the muted glow of the television, arm draped loosely over the side of a couch, cheek planted on a satin pillow, for instance. Blaine has seen him like this a hundred times. But he doesn’t ever really get used to it.

Smiling, Blaine lowers himself onto the carpet right next to Kurt’s head, and he reaches up and gently pushes the hair away from his eyes.

Kurt just barely stirs. “How was the game?” he asks, voice clogged with sleepiness. In his exhaustion, apparently he’d forgotten to be mad.

“It was good. We won. And I learned that Finn’s being treated for an especially resilient case of athlete’s foot.”

Kurt’s nose wrinkles. “Disgusting. I could’ve lived my entire life without knowing that. Thanks for stealing my innocence.”

Blaine shakes his head and brushes his knuckles along Kurt’s cheek. Kurt, in turn, leans into the touch, almost unconsciously, eyes falling shut again.

“I haven’t stolen your innocence yet,” Blaine tells him, and then there’s an awkward pause followed by a fumbling chance at recovery: “Wow, that sounded terrible. Not what I meant.”

“For your sake, I’ll pretend you didn’t say that,” Kurt tells him, but his cheeks are a little warm. Blaine pulls his hand away to stop himself from commenting on that fact. “And besides, you’re not allowed to mention Finn and _my innocence_ in the same conversation, ever again.”

“You said it first.”

“Yeah, but you made it perverted.”

“I can’t help it. It’s a gift.”

Kurt groans in exasperation and turns over on his back, kicking his feet up onto the armrest. His shirt bunches up a little in the process, so there’s a pale strip of skin showing just above his belt, and Blaine’s eyes are pulled that way but he doesn’t say anything. He wonders vaguely if the skin on his stomach is as soft as his hands. Probably it is. He has the odd desire to join him on the couch, but there’s hardly enough room for one person, let alone both of them. They’d have to be on top of each other, practically.

Not that that’s the worst mental image in the world.

“Hey, Kurt.” Blaine grabs a handful of Kurt’s shirt and gives him a little shake. “I think I should go.”

“I just ironed this yesterday,” Kurt complains, pushing his hand away. He tips his head sideways, though, looking at Blaine through half-lidded eyes. “You can spend the night, if you want. You can sleep on the foldout. My dad won’t mind.”

“Mm, I would, but I told my parents I’d be back tonight. But let’s do lunch tomorrow. I’ll make sandwiches.”

“I don’t eat processed sandwich meat,” Kurt tells him, his words punctured by a yawn in the middle.

Blaine grins. “Trust me, I know. I’ll pick you up around noon, okay? You should go upstairs to bed. Goodnight, Kurt.”

Kurt buries his head back into the pillow. Apparently he's not making it back upstairs to his bedroom anytime soon. “Goodnight, Blaine,” he says, and Blaine has another flicker of desire, the urge to kiss him goodnight, the urge to grab him by the neck and pull him down onto the floor with him and roll him over on the carpet and –

He heads back upstairs quickly, his heart beating a little too fast.

***

Saturday is not the picnic-perfect weather he’d been hoping for. The skies are grey, overcast. Dark clouds loom overhead. The only upside to the whole day is that it’s at least warmer than it has been lately, and the ground’s still dry, so Blaine packs his mom’s old wicker basket (very quaint, very old-fashioned; he’s mostly bringing it because he’s sure Kurt will approve) and drives to Kurt’s house. He’d foregone any hair gel this morning. Half because he’s running low, and half because Kurt had been sending him some variation of a _lose the product_ text every twelve hours for the last week straight. It feels weird, but in a good way. (He does still, however, comb it into submission as much as he can. Just because he’s opening himself up to new possibilities doesn’t mean he’s letting his hair take on a life of its own.)

Kurt meets him in the driveway, looking as pressed and polished as ever. Blaine stares at him for a second too long before tearing his gaze away, drumming his fingers against the steering wheel while Kurt climbs into the passenger seat.

“I brought a canteen of Shirley Temples,” he says, buckling himself in.

“Perfect. I brought a plate of freshly-baked brownies.”

“Freshly-baked by whom?” Kurt asks, giving him a suspicious look.

Blaine grins sheepishly. “By our friendly neighborhood Whole Foods.”

“That’s what I thought.” Kurt rolls his eyes and begins shuffling through Blaine’s CD collection. Without pulling his eyes back up, he adds, “Your hair looks good, by the way.”

“Thanks,” Blaine says, pulling out of the driveway. He flashes him a wink. “Everything about you looks good.”

The park Blaine had picked out is only a short distance from Kurt’s neighborhood. Somewhere along the drive, Kurt presses his forehead against the window and tips his eyes skyward, and he says, “It’s so gloomy out there. I’m fairly positive this is how _Twister_ started, on an otherwise innocuous day like this.”

“How would you know? You didn’t make it through the first five minutes of that movie.”

“I can’t help it that your taste in action movies leaves much to be desired.”

“You better be careful, the guy you’re insulting is the one who made your egg salad sandwich this morning.”

Kurt gives him another look. “You wouldn’t poison me. You enjoy basking in my presence too much to off me.”

“You have a point,” Blaine agrees, pulling into the parking lot just beyond the entrance and turning the car off. They hop out of the car together and fetch their things (Blaine was right: Kurt’s delighted by the picnic basket) and head off in search of a good spot. There are a few moms here, a bored babysitter or two, a group of devoted tennis players over on the far courts, but otherwise, the park is mostly empty for a Saturday. Blaine’s a got a nervous energy in the pit of his stomach, but he tries to ignore it. He just wants to have a nice afternoon lunch with Kurt.

“Here,” Kurt says, when they find level ground. It looks over the nearby playground, and there’s enough grass to prevent dirt stains, so it works. He looks at Blaine. “Did you bring a blanket?”

Blaine shrugs. “I brought towels?” he offers, because even though those weren’t nearly as charming, his mom didn’t want him getting any blankets dirty.

Kurt laughs and shakes out one of the towels, which just so happens to have Daffy Duck’s face on it. They’re old. That’s his only excuse. “I suppose these will do.”

They arrange the food in a semicircle around them; Kurt sits cross-legged, but Blaine flops down on his stomach, propping his chin up with his hand so he can see Kurt better. “This is romantic, right?” he says, tearing open a bag of cheddar-flavored pretzels with one hand. Kurt looks at him with raised eyebrows.

“Are you trying to be romantic?” he asks skeptically.

“I don’t know, I like to think I’m an innately romantic guy. Like I don’t even _have_ to try.”

Kurt throws a mini pretzel at his face. “Trust me, you should try.”

Blaine trades his sandwich in for a brownie. He chews in thoughtful silence for a moment. “Hey Kurt?”

“Yes Blaine?”

Blaine sits up a little straighter, so Kurt knows he’s not joking anymore. He holds out half of his brownie, even though he knows Kurt won’t eat it, because Kurt is not a dessert-before-the-main-course kind of guy.

“I was lying before,” he says, and Kurt goes, “Oh?”

Just as he’d expected, he waves the brownie away.

“I am trying,” Blaine says, because he and Kurt have always been honest with each other, and he doesn’t want to stop that now. “I’m trying really hard.”

“What, to be romantic?”

Kurt’s face is guarded, slightly, but Blaine can see past that, can see maybe just a sliver of what he’s getting at dawning in his eyes. He loves the way they understand each other, the way they don’t always need words. The way that it kind of just feels like they were meant to be. And so maybe Kurt will never take the initiative. Maybe waiting for Kurt to take the initiative is the stupid thing; there are roles in every relationship, and maybe this is Blaine’s. He can put himself out there without having too much to fear. He’s never had a friend like this – he doesn’t think they’re friends at all. They were destined to be so, so much more.

And Mercedes was right. If not now, then when?

He can’t wait any longer.

“To make you fall for me,” Blaine answers truthfully. He watches for a change in Kurt’s expression, and it’s subtle, but it’s there. Like Kurt, too, had been waiting for this all along. “Is it working?”

“You kissed me,” Kurt says. “And then nothing. I didn’t know what to think.”

“I kissed you,” Blaine counters, “and then you listed your Facebook status as single.”

Kurt groans and hides his eyes with his hand. “Please don’t bring Facebook into a conversation about our relationship.”

“Do we have one?”

“What?”

“A relationship.”

Kurt’s hand lowers. He studies him, carefully. “I’d like to,” he says, his voice a touch quieter than normal, but still steady, sure.

Blaine smiles, a sudden warmth spreading all the way from his stomach down to his toes. “Me too.”

“Then I guess we have one.”

Kurt licks his lips; Blaine draws in a breath and thinks that those are some of the best words he’s ever heard.

“We do,” he says, and he pushes the food out of the way, because a picnic now feels so insignificant compared to _kissing his boyfriend_ , and that’s what he does, right on top of a Daffy Duck blanket in the middle of the park.

They kiss and they kiss and they kiss, and they rolled around and flatten the entire pan of brownies, and they laugh and then they kiss some more. Eventually, Kurt pushes at Blaine’s shoulder, detaches himself from his lips and says, “Um, Blaine –” but before he can even get the words out, there’s a clap of thunder overheard, and not two seconds later, it starts _pouring._

“Oh God,” Blaine laughs, and they scramble to pick up all of their belongings and race back towards Blaine’s car, but it doesn’t even matter, not really, because they’re both soaked before they get there. “This day went a lot differently in my head,” he admits, fumbling for his keys.

But Kurt just shrugs. “I think it’s pretty perfect.”

They make eye contact for a moment and then suddenly, dropping the towels and the basket and the leftover plates of food, Blaine has Kurt pressed against the hood of the car while the rain beats down upon them and he kisses him like he’s never kissed anybody ever before.

***

Monday morning they meet in the hallway, their usual spot, right by Blaine’s locker. There are about six minutes until class starts. They keep exchanging silent, happy glances, and Blaine couldn’t bite back his smile if he tried. There doesn’t need to be any sort of formal announcement: he can tell Mercedes knows by the wink she gives them as she passes, and Rachel walks with her shoulders squared and high, proud, like this was somehow her doing. Blaine doesn’t mind giving her credit. He doesn’t mind much of anything at the moment.

“We should probably get to class,” Kurt says, drawing himself up. “As much as I’d rather pretend that facet of school doesn’t exist.”

“But think about how much we’ll _learn._ ”

Without making a spectacle of it, Blaine holds his hand out for Kurt to take. Kurt looks at it for a second before complying, and his smile grows twice in size, if that’s possible.

They walk down the hall together, hand-in-hand. No one says anything. No one even looks twice.

***

Blaine sits next to Kurt during Glee club. Their knees touch and their hips brush and at one point Blaine drapes his arm along the back of Kurt’s chair, and he draws gentle circles on Kurt’s back with his fingertips, and it’s good, good, _so_ good to be able to do this. Finally.

***

“Hey Anderson.”

Blaine looks up, vaguely startled by the sudden intrusion of Puck. They didn’t have a lot of friendly after school chats. Blaine’s not sure Puck has a lot of friendly after school chats with anyone.

“Hey, Puck,” he returns, packing his backpack. Kurt’s already gone for the day, a dentist appointment he couldn’t get out of, so Blaine had been planning on leaving the building alone. To his surprise, Puck walks with him.

“You and Hummel, huh?” is the first thing Puck says on the way through the doors, which, oh.

Blaine shifts his backpack on his shoulders and looks at him strangely. “Yeah,” he says, after a beat, wondering if he’s being set up or something. He’s fairly convinced this conversation isn’t going to end in Puck secretly coming out, and there doesn’t seem to be that many other alternatives. So he’s suitably confused. “Me and Kurt.”

“That’s cool. I was wondering when he was finally going to get some. Thought it might help to loosen the stick up his –”

“Is there a point to this conversation?” Blaine interrupts, and Puck shuts up, but smirks a little while doing so.

“Touchy, touchy,” he says, running his hand over his mohawk. “It’s cool, I get it. Anyway. I’m having some people over Saturday for Dude Night. And you’re invited.”

“Dude Night?” Blaine repeats, looking skeptical. Now he definitely feels like he’s being set up.

“Yeah, you know, have a few beers, play some video games. That sort of shit. It’s just the guys in Glee. My parents are out of town.”

The guys in Glee didn’t really seem to be the bonding sort. They were friends, sure, but he didn’t think they ever seemed especially tight. But who was he to turn down an offer like that? He figured being a member actually meant being a part of a family, the way Kurt had talked about it sometimes, and when there’s an open-arms invitation into the family, you don’t say no.

“Sure,” Blaine agrees. “That sounds good. Your house?”

Puck nods. “Around eight.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Sweet. Later, dude,” and Puck takes off towards his car, which is completely dented and banged up in the front like he’d recently rammed it into a brick wall, and Blaine watches him for a moment before heading towards his own.

Dude Night.

When had he ever been invited to a Dude Night before?

This, he thinks, he could get used to.

***

The rest of the week is relatively average. Kurt had no cavities to report, and Blaine gets the highest grade on an oral report, which prompts the teacher into urging him to join the debate team. (He doesn’t. At least, not yet.) Every time Blaine passes Kurt in the hall he thinks _he’s mine_ , which is a pretty awesome thought to have. His mom says he seems happier. He tells her it’s because of the weather.

Thursday night Kurt calls him, right in the middle of the math homework. He bites down on the cap of his pen and answers. “Didn’t I just talk to you three hours ago?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Kurt deadpans, “am I interrupting something? Because I can hang up –”

“No, no,” Blaine says quickly. “I like hearing your voice.”

He writes down an answer, and then scribbles it out. Math’s never been his strong suit.

They chat about small, pointless things for a while, their back-and-forth banter as easy and organic as it’d ever been, and then Blaine starts in on number sixteen and Kurt says, “So what are we doing Saturday night? I’m thinking we should venture out from Breadstix. I’ve heard talk of this mystical place they call Olive Garden where the salad bowls magically refill themselves…”

Blaine frowns at the equation. This had seemed easier when the teacher had done it. “Saturday?” he repeats, only halfway paying attention. “Saturday’s that thing at Puck’s house.”

“Excuse me?”

There’s a pause. Blaine finally stops staring at his textbook.

“Puck’s house?” Kurt finishes, slow, questioning.

“Yeah, you know – Dude Night.”

“Dude Night?”

“He didn’t… invite you to Dude Night?” The phone feels heavier than it did ten seconds ago. Kurt doesn’t say anything. Blaine bites down on the inside of his cheek and knows he’s got his answer. “He didn’t invite you to Dude Night.”

There’s another short silence.

“I won’t go,” Blaine says, resolutely.

“No.” Kurt’s voice sounds tight, like when he’s trying to pretend he’s not upset about something. “You should go. You should definitely go. Why shouldn’t you go? He invited you to Dude Night.”

“Kurt, I won’t go,” he repeats.

“Please. Don’t let me stop you from attending Dude Night.”

Blaine has the foreboding feeling that they are about to have a fight. Their first fight. Blaine does not want to have a fight about this.

“I said I won’t go. Look… maybe he just forgot to invite you. That’s possible, right?”

“It’s possible that Noah Puckerman ‘forgot’ to invite me to Dude Night. Right. Sure, Blaine. Or, have you considered this, the possibility that Puck didn’t invite me to Dude Night because he doesn’t think of me as a ‘dude’?”

Blaine licks his lips nervously. “I’m sure he—”

“No.” Kurt cuts him off, in a tone that’s more snappish than he’s ever taken with him before. “You’re not sure of anything. Look, it’s fine. The jokes about being ‘one of the girls’? I’ve heard them all before. A thousand times. It doesn’t matter. Go to Dude Night. Revel in your manliness. Enjoy exuding testosterone. Congratulations on being a _dude._ ”

He hangs up the phone before Blaine has time to get a single word in.

Blaine calls him back three times that night, but each time, it goes straight to voicemail.

***

Blaine has never been in a relationship before, so he doesn’t know how to deal with a relationship fight. A lover’s quarrel, or whatever it is they call them on TV. He’s pretty sure bringing flowers to school the next day is overkill, especially when the fight hadn’t even been his fault, not really. In fact, he hadn’t even been a participating member of the fight. More like an innocent bystander that just so happened to be dating Kurt.

He works up an apology in his head, though, just in case, but he’s pretty grateful when Kurt approaches him first with a slightly strained and abashed smile.

“I’m sorry,” Kurt says, first thing. “I overreacted.”

“No, it’s fine.” Blaine takes one of his hands in between his own, twining their fingers together, and brushing a quick kiss over one of Kurt’s knuckles. “I’m sorry you didn’t get invited to Dude Night. Puck’s a dick.”

“Of course Puck is a dick. Puck has always been a dick.”

“Whoa, whoa, excuse me,” Puck says, from right behind them, looking at them with narrowed eyes. He seems more bothered by the name-calling than the hand-holding, so he at least has that to his credit. “What did Puck do? Why is Puck a dick?”

Blaine glances over at Kurt for a brief second. “Why did you invite me to Dude Night and not Kurt?” he asks, serious. He gestures towards their hands. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Puck, but I’m gay too.”

Puck rolls his eyes. “It has nothing to do with your gaydom, dude. Mercedes and Rachel just said you three were having some sort of soiree – whatever that is – on Saturday.”

Kurt pauses. His face slowly takes on a guilty expression, and his eyes flicker to meet Blaine’s. “Right,” he says slowly. “We did agree to that. I… must have forgotten. Heh.”

“That’s why I didn’t ask. Don’t come all up on me accusing me of hate crimes I didn’t commit,” Puck says, and then slaps them both on the back and continues down the hallway, pushing a freshman out of his way as he goes.

Kurt tugs his hand loose from Blaine’s. “Whoops?” he says, trying to look both cute and apologetic.

“It’s a good thing I like you.” Blaine shakes his head and grabs Kurt’s hand again, but this time, he uses it to reel him in so their faces are only an inch or two apart. “I almost left a pleading voicemail on your phone last night. Then how bad would you have felt?”

Before Kurt can answer, Blaine leans forward and presses a short, chaste kiss against his lips. “ _Revel in your manliness_ ,” he teases, in a perfect impression of Kurt. Laughing, Kurt pushes him away. “ _Go and exude testosterone,_ ” he adds, making a face.

“You’ve made your point!” Kurt says loudly, and when Blaine starts in on “ _congrats on being a DUDE_ ” Kurt actually plugs his fingers into his ears, walking away quickly, humming at the top of his lungs like he can pretend Blaine’s not talking at all.

They are certifiably ridiculous.

Blaine loves it.

***

Blaine arranges to meet Wes and David for lunch on Saturday. He hadn’t realized how much he’d miss them, once the missing actually kicked in. He loves being at McKinley now, being a part of New Directions, but Dalton and the Warblers have and will always have a big piece of his heart. They agree to meet at David’s house, because he has a large backyard and a grill, and when Blaine gets there at 12:30 there are about ten cars parked outside along the street. Suspicious, he rounds the house, and comes face-to-face with fifteen guys in pressed pants and blazers.

“Guys,” he says, looking around in wonder at all of the Warblers, “what’s –”

But before he can finish his question, they burst into song: _”Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back,_ ” they sing, in perfect harmony, and while Blaine’s staring gapingly at them, Jeff walks over and places a Dalton blazer around Blaine’s shoulders that’s two sizes too big, but it doesn’t matter. He laughs and pulls his arms through the sleeves.

After they wrap up a really awesome ‘70s theme song medley, the sixteen of them sit around chatting about school and singing and anything that comes to mind, really. They overindulge on hotdogs and sing impromptu a capella songs. Someone, from somewhere, magically produces a guitar. It’s one of the most fun informal Warblers experiences Blaine ever remembers having. Even if Wes does keep opening and closing his fist like he doesn’t know how to function without a mallet to call order.

They sit around, talking and singing and eating, until right before sundown. “Thanks, you guys,” Blaine says, finally pulling the blazer off and returning it to its rightful owner. “This was an awesome surprise.”

“Good luck at Nationals, Blaine,” Trent says, and the other guys murmur their assent.

“Rep us well,” David adds, punching him lightly in the arm with a grin.

On the drive back – straight to Puck’s house, incidentally, for what he thinks will be the complete opposite of what just went down at David’s – Blaine thinks about how glad he is to have those guys as friends. How easily they’d accepted him into their fold, flaws and all. He wouldn’t trade those experiences for the world.

***

 _ **From: Kurt** 5:36 pm.  
Did you have fun with the Warblers?_

 **From: Blaine** 5:38 pm.  
you knew?

 **From: Kurt** 5:39 pm.  
Knew? I arranged it.

 **From: Blaine** 5:42 pm.  
sneaky sneaky, mr. hummel. you’re the best.

***

Finn opens the door to Puck’s house, but not in one of those hi-welcome-to-the-party Betty Homemaker ways. Instead, he pulls the door open, gives a little wave and says, “Oh, hey Blaine,” and then continues towards the living room like he hadn’t paused at all. He’s carrying a twelve-pack of Bud Light, which Blaine has only had once in his life and thought it tasted remarkably like cat pee, but he supposes there’s really only one kind of beer for Dude Night: cheap.

“Everyone else already here?” he asks, peeling his jacket off and glancing around for a coat hanger. He doesn’t find one, but he does see a mound of jackets hanging over an armchair in the den. Shrugging, his joins the pile.

“Pretty much. Sam and Mike and Artie are in the living room. Puck’s trying to break into his parents’ liquor cabinet, but he can’t figure out the combination.”

“Did he try 1234?” Blaine suggests, trying to be helpful, and Finn shrugs and pokes his head into the hallway and yells up, “Hey, Puck, try 1234!”

There’s a scuffle of motion, a quiet click, and then a celebratory “Hell _yes_!” and everyone’s looking at him like they’re suitably impressed, which is not a bad feeling. Blaine Anderson, alcohol savior of Dude Night. Except then he suddenly has a flashback of the last time he was drunk around these guys and… oh.

Oh no.

Puck tramples down the stairs with a bottle of vodka in one hand and a bottle of tequila in the other. Blaine feels a wave of nausea just looking at them. “Hey Anderson,” Puck says, “welcome to the Casa de Puckerman. What the hell are you so dressed up for?”

Blaine glances down at his clothes. He’s wearing jeans and a button-up. Not even something he’d wear on a date. Then again, Puck’s wearing basketball shorts and a wifebeater and Finn’s got baggy sweatpants. He guesses, judging by their outfits, he is a bit overdressed. “I didn’t have time to go home and change,” he says, and then gestures towards the living room, where the other guys are sprawled out in various places around the TV. “What’re we playing?”

“Call of Duty, baby. All night long. Here, take a beer.”

“Beer before liquor, never sicker,” Blaine points out, taking the offered can but not opening it yet.

Puck stops and stares at him like that was the greatest thing he’s ever heard. “Did you just come up with that?” he asks, looping an arm around Blaine’s shoulders before he has time to dispute and dragging him into the room. “That was, like, inspired. Guys, we have a beer Yoda with us. Who knew?”

Sam, Artie, and Mike glance up from their controllers and nod their heads in greeting. “Hey, Blaine,” they echo, then go right back to committing virtual manslaughter on the TV screen.

“Hop on in,” Mike says, “Sam’s getting his ass handed to him.”

“I have an unfair disadvantage,” Sam claims in defense, beating down so hard on the controller that Blaine’s mildly afraid he’s going to break it.

“What’s your unfair disadvantage?” he asks, dropping into a beanbag near the couch. He sets his beer down on the coffee table and slips out of his shoes.

Sam frowns. “That I suck.”

“We can’t all be good at everything,” Finn says, kicking Sam’s feet out of the way and sitting down with his back braced against the table.

“Or anything,” Artie adds, and they all laugh, and Sam one-handedly flips him off. It doesn’t affect his playing, really. It’s not like he could get much worse.

“Okay, boys,” Puck says, in his deep announcer voice; they all glance over their shoulders to look at him. In the lull, Puck has aligned six shot glasses on the coffee table, all filled to the brim. “Let’s get Dude Night started.”

“I thought we were sticking to beer,” Blaine says, scrunching his nose just a little.

“Don’t be a pussy, Anderson. We’re playing a drinking game. You just have to take a shot every time you die.”

They all agree; Blaine’s only played Call of Duty a handful of times before, but he figures, how hard can it be to stay alive?

Apparently, as he learns twenty minutes and three vodka shots later, it’s a lot harder than it looks. They’re all drinking pretty liberally, though. Even Finn and Puck, the self-declared experts, have a few shots under their belts. Blaine suspects Puck’s taking them even when he doesn’t die. Maybe he just likes to be drunk.

Blaine has never marathonned a video game before. He’s pretty sure his current record is somewhere around two hours; when he glances wearily at the clock sometime later that night, it’s suddenly one o’clock in the morning. It takes him a while to read it. The numbers are wiggling around, and he’s not sure if it’s because of the alcohol or because he’s been staring at a television set for the past three – four – holy crap, five hours.

“I’m drunk,” Sam moans, from somewhere to his left. “How did I get drunk?”

Mike heaves a throw pillow at his head, but he misses extraordinarily and it nearly knocks a vase off the fireplace mantle. “You got drunk because you suck,” he says, once they’re sure it’s done wobbling. “And you suck because you’re drunk.”

“Vicious cycle,” Artie comments. Somehow he’s out of his wheelchair, chilling on the ground beside the couch. Had one of them helped him down? Had he fallen? Blaine can’t remember. His head feels woozy.

Finn’s the first to throw his controller down. “I can’t do this anymore, man,” he says, covering his eyes with his hands. He’s probably the least intoxicated of them all, but his eyes are bloodshot regardless. Most likely all of theirs are. “I forfeit, whatever. I’m done.”

“Me too,” Blaine concedes, glad he’s not the first one to give up, and he tosses his controller aside.

Artie’s not even holding his controller anymore – where had it gone? – and Sam and Puck and Mike all give in with a shrug. “Anybody want to shotgun a beer?” Puck asks, but they all just groan in response.

“We should call the girls,” Artie suggests after a second, popping his head up off the carpet. “We should convince them to come over.”

“No, dude, this is Dude Night. That would totally invalidate the point,” Puck argues, but then he hesitates and adds, “Though Lauren is about two minutes away from showing me her boobs.”

“Don’t invite them,” Sam chimes in. “Santana always makes me leave the TV on when we make out. She keeps wanting to watch this show called The L Word.”

“I’d watch Barney if it meant I got to make out with Santana,” Mike says, and when they turn to look at him, he adds, “If I wasn’t with Tina, I mean.”

“It’s not like it’d be hard,” Puck says, leaning back against the couch. “Santana puts out for anyone. Brittany’s better in bed, though. She’s more – enthusiastic.”

Artie points an accusing finger at him. “Watch it.”

“Just sayin’, man.” Puck glances over at Blaine with a devilish look in his eyes. “What about Kurt? Has he put out for you yet?”

“Gross, dude, that’s my stepbrother,” Finn cuts in, and Blaine flashes him a grateful look.

“So? Step ain’t blood.”

Blaine shakes his head. No matter how drunk he is, he will never be drunk enough for this conversation. Not with these guys. “I am not answering that.”

“Whatever. I bet he’s a giant prude.” Puck burps loudly and uninhibitedly and stands up, swaying a little. He grabs the couch to steady himself but when he goes to sit back down, he lands clumsily right next to Finn, draping an arm over his shoulders. “It’s late enough, right? We should see what’s on Skinemax.”

“I don’t think all of us want to watch that, Puck,” Mike says, gesturing towards Blaine with his head.

“Why not? They have dudes on there.”

Sam snorts. “Yeah, dudes makin’ hot love to girls.”

Blaine shudders at the mental image. “I’ve seen the porn you straight guys watch. Trust me, there’s a reason I’m gay.”

There’s a pause in the conversation, and Blaine wonders vaguely if he’s crossed some sort of line, if it’s an unwritten rule at Dude Night that you don’t speak about your sexuality unless your sexuality happens to be the same as everybody else’s, but then Puck says, sounding legitimately curious, “So you watch gay porn?”

“I…” He glances around the room. “Are you really asking me that?”

“I don’t know.” Puck shrugs. “I’ve never seen it. What do dudes in porn do with each other, anyway?”

“Pretty much the same thing you’re doing with Finn right now,” Blaine says, just to be mean. “But with less clothing.”

The two of them immediately pull away from each other, leaving plenty of space in between. The other guys crack up.

Puck’s enthusiasm is not to be dampened, though. “So are you usually the dude giving, or are you the one ta—”

“Hey Finn,” Blaine says loudly, just to change the subject, “How’s Rachel?”

“Or are you back to Quinn now?” Sam adds with a smirk. “We can’t keep track…”

“Or, better yet, both at the same time,” Mike says, and his jaw goes a little slack at the possibility.

“Hey, why are you all focusing on me?” Finn grumbles, but he looks like he’s possibly considering that magical outcome, too. “What about you, Mike? Tina shortened the leash for one night I see.”

“Hey, Tina’s cool.” Mike doesn’t look ashamed about defending her; after a second, though, he shrugs loosely. “Sometimes… she starts talking about marriage, though. It kind of freaks me out. I mean, we’re in high school.”

“Ugh, chicks and marriage,” Artie says, flapping his hand in the air like he can somehow relate. “I’m glad Brittany hasn’t brought that up yet.” He pauses and rubs his chin. “Though I’m not sure she even knows what marriage is, to be honest…”

There’s a strange silence for a moment, and then Sam offers up, probably because he’s had too much too drink, “I took a laxative two days ago so I could eat pizza in the cafeteria and not feel guilty.”

“I kind of want to make out with Rachel even though I’m supposed to only want to make out with Quinn,” Finn says next.

Puck stares up at the ceiling. Apparently they’re all confessing, or something, but when he speaks, for maybe the first time ever that Blaine can remember, his voice is quiet and serious, not joking at all: “I keep having this dream of this little blonde girl looking up at me and calling me daddy.”

They’re all quiet after that. Blaine knows he’s never going to talk about this, not even to Kurt, but he feels a sort of manly bond with the guys that he’s never exactly had before, and it’s not something he’s apt to forget.

***

Blaine sneaks out of his loaned-from-Sam Spiderman sleeping bag and into the bathroom around 3 o’clock in the morning, where he crouches in the bathtub and calls Kurt. It rings once, twice, and on the third ring he picks up, and Blaine smiles warmly at the sound of his voice.

“Hi,” he says. “Puck’s house is cleaner than I thought it’d be.”

“That’s a relief,” Kurt laughs. Blaine can hear him shushing someone in the background before returning to the line. “Are you having fun?”

“I’m drunk,” Blaine says, which he figures is sufficient enough of an answer.

“Oh good. Please tell me there’s no spin the bottle this time around.”

“No spin the bottle.” Blaine looks up and studies the different kinds of shampoos they have in their bathroom. He’s pretty sure the Daisy Fuentes for Voluminous Curls isn’t Puck’s. “Besides,” he says, “the only person I want to kiss right now is you.”

“Mm, then it’s too bad you went to Dude Night, isn’t it?” His voice lowers, though, and Blaine can tell he’s smiling into the phone. “But. I want to too.”

“Kurt,” says a shrill voice from Kurt’s end that is most definitely Rachel Berry, “is that _Blaine_?”

“I should go,” Kurt says quickly. “And you should get to sleep. But not with any of those guys, you hear?”

“Cross my heart.” Blaine closes his eyes and tips his head backwards. “Goodnight, Kurt,” he says, and he doesn’t even remember hanging up the phone.

***

Blaine wakes up to the sound of someone peeing. It’s probably the worst wake up call he’s ever received, and when he glances upwards out the window, it’s still dark. When he glances over the side of the bathtub, there’s Sam, taking a leak.

“Hi,” Blaine says groggily, and Sam jumps.

“Holy crap,” he says, flushing and zipping up. He’s still a little drunk, Blaine thinks. Otherwise he might’ve been a little more freaked out. “Why are you in the bathtub?”

Blaine shrugs and doesn’t bother moving. “It’s comfy.”

Sam nods, like he can get behind that. “Cool,” he says, and then he turns around and heads for the door, very thoughtfully flicking off the light as he goes. “Later.”

***

 

Kurt gets asked out on a date in the middle of a Banana Republic in the downtown Lima Mall on a Tuesday. This would be okay if: 1) Blaine was the one who’d asked him out on a date, but he wasn’t, or, 2) Blaine didn’t happen to be standing _right next to Kurt_ when he was asked, but he is. The guy has bright blue eyes and a buzz cut, and he’s tall, a good half-foot taller than Blaine, even, and he’s muscular and his arms are huge and he’s actually really, really attractive. He’s probably older, too, maybe a college freshman. One of those frat guys. The kind who runs three miles every day.

The guy walks up while Kurt’s sorting through an assortment of sweater vests, and he grins easily and says, “Hey, how’s it going?” and Blaine, from across the clothes racks, thinks that maybe he works there except he’s not wearing a nametag. Kurt looks briefly startled; he pushes a shirt back on its hanger and clears his throat.

“Good. Um. How are you?”

The guy with the stupidly bright smile sticks his hands in his pockets and manages to look both confident and shy, which is something Blaine has never been able to master. “I’m good, too. I, uh, I was wondering if you’re doing anything this weekend – and you don’t have to answer right now, but here.” He tugs a piece of paper out of his pocket and presses it into Kurt’s hand. Blaine wonders irritably how long he’d been storing it in there, if it was crinkly after being shoved back in by the last non-single guy he’d tried to pick up. “Here’s my phone number. You should text me sometime and let me know when you’re free.”

Blaine waits for it – and waits for it – and waits for it – but all Kurt does is nod and slips the paper into his own pocket. “Okay,” he says, returning a warm smile, and the guy touches his shoulder briefly before turning and walking away, not even sparing a glance at Blaine. As if he were invisible.

Blaine’s lip is curled in disgust. He waits for Kurt to make some sort of excuse, to laugh and insult the guy, but he doesn’t. In fact, Kurt has the gall to say, with a slightly moony look in his eyes, “That has never happened to me before.”

“Congratulations,” Blaine says, harsher than he’d intended. “You better text him now, I’m sure he’s dying to hear from you.”

The dazed look drops from Kurt’s eyes. He rounds on Blaine, snapping back to reality. “What’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me? Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously. You’re acting like a jealous child.”

Blaine _feels_ like a jealous child. But it’s justified. Totally justified. And Kurt’s not really helping matters. “Well, _sorry_ if I don’t like another guy hitting on my boyfriend right in front of me.”

The fight visibly drains out of Kurt almost immediately. A smile tugs at the corner of his lips. This, in turn, makes it harder for Blaine to be mad at him. How can he be mad when Kurt looks like that? “What?” he says, defensively, still guarded.

Kurt is still smiling. “You called me your boyfriend.”

“Well… yeah.” Blaine looks at him levelly. “That’s what you are.”

“I know. I just haven’t heard you say it out loud before.”

“Really?”

The fight is draining out of Blaine, too. What a stupid thing to fight about.

“I don’t care about that guy,” Kurt says, gesturing over his shoulder like he’d already forgotten which direction he’d come from. “I mean, it’s flattering to be hit on – in public – but that’s it. I like being your boyfriend. I like _you._ ”

Just to be sure, Blaine steps closer. “He was pretty cute, though.”

Kurt laughs. “Not as cute as you.”

Even though they’re in public, even though there are probably people watching, Blaine reaches forward and kisses him square on the lips. He loves that he’s allowed to do that now. He loves that Kurt is his.

***

They’re in the middle of a family dinner when Blaine drops the news that, by the way, he thinks he’s going to need a tux for prom. His mom looks up from her soup bowl with such excitement that he immediately regrets it, but it is kind of nice to have someone be happy for him. His dad just keeps chewing his chicken. Prom is not something he’d be inherently thrilled about.

“Our little boy going to prom,” his mom says, reaching across the table and squeezing his hand. “You’re going to have so much fun. Do you have a date?”

Blaine nods. He hasn’t had this talk with his parents yet. He’d been meaning to, really, there just hadn’t been a good opportunity. Even the coming out talk had been easier than this. (He hadn’t really needed to officially come out to them, though; the notes his teachers sent home from school pre-Dalton had done all the talking.)

“Yeah, actually,” he says, spearing a green bean on his fork. “I mean, I haven’t asked him yet, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be going with Kurt.”

There it is. The momentary flash of disappointment in his dad’s eyes, like he’d been hoping, deep down, that he’d been about to say a girl’s name. At least he disguises it fairly well. Silent, he goes back to eating like nothing had ever happened.

“Because Kurt’s my boyfriend,” he adds, and this time, both of his parents look at him.

“Since when?” his mom demands, but not in an angry way. If she’s mad, it’s probably only because he didn’t tell them sooner. She’s been surprisingly cool about everything else.

“Not long now. Just a few weeks.”

“And are you boys being safe?”

Blaine nearly chokes on his vegetables. “Mom!” he says, scrunching his forehead. Talking about sex with Burt Hummel isn’t nearly as torturous as with his own mom, but only because she’ll want the nitty gritty details. “We’re not – doing that. We’re just going to prom together. That’s all.”

She nods, but with a suspicious little smile peeking through. “We’ll start looking for a tuxedo tomorrow,” she tells him, and then, turning to her husband, “Honey, how’s the chicken?”

***

Kurt acts like he doesn’t want to go to prom. He puts on a big show of complaining about how rudimentary he thinks the whole thing is, how pointless, how inane. Blaine’s glad he knows Kurt well enough to tell that he’s bluffing. He’d be a pretty crappy boyfriend if he took his words at face value and swept prom out of his mind. Kurt wants to go to prom. And, presumably, he wants to go to prom with Blaine.

The thing is, Blaine has never been to a prom before. He’s never even really thought about it. Dalton had biannual formal dances with their sister school, but not prom – and even if they did, who would he go with? He knows nothing about boutonnières and limo costs and what color tie to wear. He doesn’t even know how to ask Kurt, because everything he thinks of seems corny and lame.

The most practical option seems to be asking him in song, but the last time he’d attempted to serenade somebody it hadn’t gone so well, and besides, he doesn’t have the Warblers at his whimsy anymore. He could ask the New Direction kids, but they all seem pretty preoccupied, what with their coming in and out of relationships and switching of dates more frequently than an entire season of Gossip Girl. So he rules out that possibility. Besides, he thinks, that’s so overdone.

He still wants some sort of grand and elegant gesture, but what happens is this: he and Kurt have the house to themselves for the afternoon and so, like any unsupervised teenage couple, they’re making out on the couch in the basement. Kurt’s flat on his back and Blaine’s straddling his hips, leaning over him, arms braced on either side of Kurt’s head. They’re kissing hungrily, passionately, all tongue and teeth. Kurt brings one hand up to Blaine’s waist and his fingers brush against warm skin. The touch is electric. Blaine groans and drops away from Kurt’s lips, buries his head in the crook of Kurt’s neck, breathing in deep the smell of him, the familiar smell, his favorite smell.

“Kurt,” Blaine says, low and needy, “go to prom with me.”

Kurt stops running his fingers along the hem of Blaine’s shirt. He instantly and ferociously regrets speaking.

“What?” Kurt says, unsure, like he’s trying not to get his hopes up. Like maybe he misheard.

But now that it’s out there, Blaine can’t very well take it back. He figures he doesn’t need a perfect moment. This is pretty perfect in and of itself. “Prom,” he says, pressing a soft kiss against Kurt’s jawline before pulling back. He shifts his weight to his knees but doesn’t bother climbing off. He’s too comfortable. “Go with me.”

“Really? But I thought we both agreed it was stupid –”

“I don’t care if it’s stupid. We’re in high school. We’re allowed to be stupid.” He pulls Kurt’s hand between his own. “Come on. Say yes. Go with me.”

Kurt’s nodding, slowly at first, trying it out, before giving in and nodding for real. “Okay,” he agrees. “Prom. We’ll go.”

“Awesome.” Blaine grins and leans in for another kiss, to pick up just where they’d left off. But Kurt plants a firm hand against his chest and pushes him away, wriggling out from underneath him, adjusting his Blaine-wrinkled clothes and clambering to his feet.

“Where are you going?” Blaine demands, half-astonished, half-insulted. He wasn’t done making out with him. They still had a lot of potential kissing to do.

“Prom’s in two weeks, Blaine,” Kurt says absentmindedly, digging around in his desk drawer for a sketchpad and a pencil. “That’s barely enough time to figure out what I’m going to wear.”

Blaine pouts at him. He’s pretty sure this is neither the first nor the last time that kissing him is going to be overshadowed by clothes. Stupid prom. “But—”

Kurt waves an impatient hand at him. “Don’t get me started, Blaine,” he says, tongue poking out of his mouth in concentration. “We haven’t even _begun_ thinking about what you’re going to wear.”

***

Mr. Schuester takes it upon himself to post a Countdown To Nationals poster in the front of the choir room, and every day he rips off a sheet and they marvel at how quickly it’s approaching. It gets swept into Prom Frenzy a lot of the time, and Blaine thinks that having two integral events so close to each other should definitely be outlawed. But they’re all fairly decent at multitasking. Blaine, at least, is pretty sure that there’s nothing better than spending three days in New York City with Kurt, singing in front of a hundred billion people, or however many are slated to be in the audience, and then coming home and taking him to the biggest school-organized function of the year six days later. It’s hectic, sure, but it’s the best kind of hectic he could ever imagine.

When the countdown drops to 10 Days, ten days until they leave, Mr. Schue draws their attention by handing out thick packets of paper. “Okay, guys, make sure your parents sign everything,” he says. “And I just got the hotel arrangements in today. We have six rooms – come see me after practice if you want to see who you’ll be rooming with. Now, let’s start rehearsing.”

They do, and it’s one of the most fun, most upbeat, most infectious performances they’ve ever given. The whole room radiates with _fun_. No drama, no fighting, no yelling or screaming. They’re all doing a miraculous job at getting along. Even Santana seems nicer.

Afterwards, Kurt grabs Blaine by the hand and drags him over to Mr. Schuester. “We’d like to know who else we’re staying with, please,” Kurt says, and Mr. Schue consults the list.

“Kurt, it looks like you’re with Finn, Mike, and Artie, and Blaine, you’ll be with Puck and Sam.”

That seems fair enough to Blaine. He’s about to say so, when all of a sudden Kurt cuts in with a sharp, “Um, excuse me, but I’d prefer if Blaine and I were in a room together –”

Schue lowers his papers. “Come on, Kurt, you know I can’t do that.”

“Because we’re _obviously_ going to perform lewd sexual acts with Puck and Finn two beds over.”

“No, it’s not about that. But it’s pretty common knowledge that the two of you are dating. Imagine how inappropriate it would look if I put you two in a hotel room together – if Principal Figgins caught word –”

“Fine,” Kurt says tersely. “Can I at least room with Rachel and Mercedes?”

Mr. Schue hesitates, but then folds. It’s pretty hard not to want to compromise with Kurt. “I think that’d be okay,” he agrees, scribbling a quick note on his paper. “Blaine, are you okay with –”

“Yeah, that works for me,” Blaine says. He likes those guys. Besides, it’s just a few hours each night. He’ll get to spend the rest of the time with Kurt.

“Great. Then I will see you guys tomorrow.”

Mr. Schue grabs his briefcase and hurries out of the room, leaving Blaine and Kurt virtually alone. Blaine raises his eyebrows, teasingly. “So would you perform lewd sexual acts with me if Finn and Puck _weren’t_ two beds over?”

“Oh shut up,” Kurt says, but he doesn’t deny it.

***

Nationals is on a Saturday. One of the greatest thing about making it to a national competition is that they’re excused from school on Friday, and right before the bell on Thursday Figgins makes a staticy, rushed announcement of, “And good luck to our Glee Club as they head to New York this evening. We all hope you bring home the big prize,” right between tomorrow’s lunch schedule and a reminder that visible g-strings are strictly prohibited. The buses are already waiting in the parking lot when school lets out, and their overnight bags had been locked inside Schue’s office.

The eleven-hour bus ride isn’t going to be fun, but there are an abundance of soda bottles and energy drinks in a cooler up front, and when Rachel Berry suggests a harmonizing singalong within the first thirty minutes, they all shoot her down pretty quickly, so at least they don’t have that to dread. Blaine and Kurt share the seat right behind Mercedes, and they spend a good portion of the trip in quiet, comfortable conversation.

Sometime after sundown Kurt falls asleep, and his head sort of unconsciously tips sideways so he’s resting against Blaine’s shoulder. Blaine doesn’t mind. He settles down further into the plastic-covered seat, trying not to jostle him too much, and closes his own eyes, listening contently to the quiet, steady breathing in his ear.

They’re both shaken out of their sleep a few hours later by Puck making obnoxious fart noises in the seat behind them. This, Blaine thinks, is the second worst wake up call he’s ever received.

***

They don’t even make it to the hotel until just before three o’clock in the morning, and when the overhead lights flicker on and Mr. Schuester claps his hands to rouse them, slowly, one-by-one, they pop out of their seats and march off the bus like zombies. Blaine feels especially groggy; he slips his hand into Kurt’s, mostly so he can be led towards the lobby without being forced to open his eyes all the way.

The boys are on the seventh floor. The girls – and Kurt – are on the fifth. They take an elevator up together, silent save for the occasional sleepy groan or stifled yawn, and when the doors slide open at their first stop, Kurt disentangles his hand from Blaine’s and very quickly, very unthinkingly, presses a kiss against his lips.

“Night, Blaine,” he says, hoisting his bags (bags: plural; Puck and Finn had brought only a backpack each) over his shoulder and following Mercedes down the hall. Blaine smiles, considerably more awake now, and rests his back against the sleek wall of the elevator. Twenty seconds later, the doors reopen.

The rooms themselves are not all that impressive. It’s the standard hotel setup. Queen-sized beds with scratchy blankets, a Bible in the nightstand, tacky paintings on the wall. He follows Sam and Puck into room 723, and they all exchange mild glances when they realize there are three people and two beds, which means somebody’s obviously sharing.

“I call the big spoon,” Blaine announces, tossing his duffel bag off to the side, and that’s how he winds up with a mattress to himself and all the room in the world to sprawl out.

***

Friday, the majority of them don’t wake up until well past noon. The continental breakfast has been cleaned up and put away by that point so they get dressed and find a quaint (read: not dirty) diner about two blocks away. Afterwards, they’ve got a few hours to explore the city by themselves (“keep your cell phones on you at all times, hide your wallets, don’t talk to strangers,” Schue tells them, looking pointedly at Brittany for that last one) and Blaine and Kurt head off on their own.

“We could be shopping right now,” Kurt complains after the third time Blaine refuses to stop for a street vendor. “Where are you taking me, anyway?”

Blaine blocks the sun out of his eyes with one hand and looks towards the sky, the assortment of skyscrapers. “The Empire State Building,” he says, heading in that direction.

Kurt reluctantly follows along, his nose wrinkling. Kurt is not much into touristy things. “Why?”

“Because I have this crazy and impulsive desire to kiss you at the top,” Blaine tells him, and after that, Kurt stops complaining.

***

Kurt still manages to drag him into approximately two hundred and fifty seven stores by the time they have to meet back at the hotel for one final run-through rehearsal. Blaine’s head is spinning, and he’s carrying three bags of ‘souvenirs’ that definitely hadn’t been there that morning.

***

There are no less than six billion people in the audience.

In all reality, though the Hammerstein Ballroom is spacious and beautiful, there are probably only a few thousand people sitting out there. But from behind the curtain, where Blaine’s poking his head out and staring into the endless rows of seats, he can see that pretty much every spot is filled. Blaine Anderson does not get nervous before singing competitions. He doesn’t even have much of a solo this time around. But there’s something _big_ about being the new guy at a national level competition (and, he thinks, somewhat selfishly, this will look awesome on his future college applications) and he’s heard whisper that the other teams are absolutely incredible, and Rachel Berry’s constant pacing is making _everyone_ anxious. So it’s not exactly a day at the spa.

He’s about to pull his head back in and join the team when he sees it. Them. Him, in particular. Just about gaping, Blaine rubs at his eyes to make sure he’s not seeing things – there are, after all, a lot of bearded men in New York City – but he’s not imagining it. He’s not making it up. There, twelve rows back, already seated, chatting amicably with the other couples around them, are his parents. His dad. There. To see him.

Blaine can count on one hand the number of times his dad has come to see him perform. He’s never tried to stop him, never discouraged him from singing, but he’s always mysteriously busy the day of concerts, competitions – “it’s just not my thing,” how many times had his dad told him that? And yet there he is. In New York. For him.

He lets the curtain fall closed and turns around and there’s Kurt, two feet away, watching him with a smile. “See anyone special out there?” Kurt asks, the picture of innocence.

Blaine’s heart skips a beat.

“You,” he says, his voice smooth and steady despite the weird things his stomach is doing. “This is totally your doing.”

Kurt looks perfectly nonplussed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t do anything. All I did was convince my dad to call your dad and tell him that he and Carole were driving up for the competition and that they might’ve had extra seats in the SUV.”

There’s a pause.

“And maybe I told him to mention something about how he likes to listen to Coast to Coast AM on roadtrips,” Kurt adds. “What, our dads both enjoy the paranormal. That’s strictly coincidence.”

Blaine is shaking his head. He can’t believe this. He can’t believe him. He looks at Kurt, really looks at him, takes him all in, and even then. Sometimes it feels too good to be true. “Thank you,” he says quietly, because it’s all he has, but he means it, means it so much.

Kurt wraps his arms around Blaine’s shoulders and pulls him in for a quick, meaningful hug. He opens his mouth like maybe he’s going to say something more, but all of a sudden, Finn appears just behind them, sidestepping nervously like he’s afraid to interrupt. “Uh, guys, we’re supposed to be taking our seats now,” he offers, phrasing it more like a question than a statement. “But if you – I mean, I could –”

They laugh and let go of each other. “Come on, Finn,” Kurt says, leading both of them away from the stage. “Let’s go watch our decidedly-less-talented competition.”

None of the other teams are actually less talented, though. A few times Blaine forgets that they’re slated to go sixth, and he spends the first four-and-a-half performances enjoying himself in the audience, watching impressively choreographed song after impressively choreographed song, and there’s a team from Delaware that actually _blows his mind_ with a medley of Bruno Mars songs, but then all of a sudden they’re being stood up and shepherded towards backstage because, oh right, they’re next.

Kurt grasps his fingers on the way up the steps. Mr. Schue is shooting out last-minute tips, and Quinn is practicing the Lamaze breathing she’d learned a year ago, and Rachel’s singing scales and getting progressively higher pitched with each run through, and Blaine’s pretty sure Tina is visibly shaking. They can do this, though. All of them. When the music starts it’ll be like they’re right back in that choir room, and he feels a familiar dull burn of energy in his arms and legs, and he gives Kurt’s hand a quick squeeze before they line up where they’re suppose to be, and with one final deep breath, the curtain goes up.

***

Third place. Third place out of ten at a National Competition, the biggest scaled show choir tournament in the United States. That is pretty freaking incredible, considering. (The kids from Delaware take the gold; Blaine doesn’t even have to force himself to applaud, because they really were that good.) When they announce the third place winners there’s a slight moment of maybe just the teensiest disappointment, but it doesn’t last long: a second later they’re shouting and hugging and hugging and shouting, and when Blaine glances over his shoulder into the audience, his dad’s on his feet, clapping, and Kurt’s face presses against the crook of his neck, and it’s one of the best feelings he has ever, ever had.

***

No one back at McKinley really cares about their achievement. There was a banner before first period that had been messily thrown together the night before, probably by a member of the PTA, that said _Congratulations New Directions!!!_ but it’s ripped cleanly in half and mysteriously missing by the time lunch rolls around. With prom the next weekend, everyone else apparently has much more pressing matters on their minds.

***

Somehow, Saturday afternoon, Blaine finds himself standing in front of a vanity mirror right next to Mercedes Jones. She looks stunning in a midnight blue dress, and she’s hovering inches away from her reflection diligently applying a coat of mascara. Up until she’d arrived outside his house a little after noon that day, Blaine had thought getting ready for prom was a rite most men went at alone. Apparently that’s not the case. He stands behind her, looping a classic black tie around his neck.

“I’m glad you went with the three-piece tux,” Mercedes tells him, reaching for a tube of lipstick. “Poor little Kurt is going to eat his heart out.”

“That’s if he’s still alive,” Blaine counters. “I’m pretty sure everyone’s going to drop dead of jealousy when you walk in the room.”

She smiles at him with bright white teeth and goes back to fixing her makeup. “Are you excited?”

“For prom? Yeah, I am. It should be fun. I mean, it’s legitimately impossible for there to be drama on prom night. Right?”

“Never, ever, ever,” she says, brandishing an eyeliner stick at him like a weapon, “rule out the possibility of drama.”

“Good point. Hey, by the way, how’s my hair look?”

Mercedes turns around to study him seriously, as if the question were the most important thing she’d ever been asked. “Can I?” she asks, one hand extended in midair, and when he nods, she very carefully, very meticulously wraps one strand of carefully coifed hair around her finger and curls it around in front. “There,” she says happily. “Perfect.”

“Thanks,” he says, peering at his own reflection. It does look pretty good. Why do girls always seem to have a sixth sense for these kind of things? “So what’s the plan for today, anyway?”

“Well, we’re taking my dad’s SUV. We’re picking up Kurt, first, at 6:30 and then heading to Rachel’s house, because one of her dads has a professional camera and he promised he’d email pictures to all of our parents. Breadstix reservations are for 7, and we should get to prom by 8:30 at the latest.” Mercedes rattles the numbers off so quickly that it’s like she’s had them memorized for weeks. Blaine just listens and nods – who said prom had to be a hassle? As far as he was concerned, they should’ve let the girls plan everything all along. It made his job so much easier.

They spend the rest of the afternoon getting ready – Blaine has to veto an at home foot bath three times before she gives up – and finally, right on schedule, they’re ready to go. “You look amazing,” Blaine says, holding the door for Mercedes, but she clucks her tongue and shakes her head and corrects him, “ _We_ look amazing.”

He won’t argue that.

Kurt had refused to let him see what he’d decided to wear for the prom – Blaine is only thirty percent frightened that it’s going to be something fluorescent or shiny or glow-in-the-dark, but then, he figures if anyone can pull it off, it’s Kurt – so he doesn’t know what to expect when they pull into the driveway. “I’ll wait here, you go get him,” Mercedes says, shifting the car into park, and Blaine unbuckles and climbs out of the seat and heads up the steps and rings the doorbell.

Burt, unsurprisingly, opens the door. “Hey, Blaine,” he says, stepping aside to let him in. “Looking sharp.”

“Thanks, Mr. Hummel.” This all feels very stereotypical 80s teen movie, except maybe he should’ve brought flowers for Carole. Did people still buy their male date’s stepmother flowers? “Is Kurt ready?” He glances up at the staircase, waiting for the final movie trope: Kurt making his slow descent, one step at a time, all eyes on him, maybe a sudden and inexplicable wind blowing his hair back, possibly moving in slow motion.

But, instead, never one to give into clichés, Kurt enters from the living room. All eyes _are_ on him, though.

That’s because he looks incredible.

“You look incredible,” Blaine says, when he can remember how to speak.

He does. He’s wearing an outfit that Blaine definitely hadn’t seen hanging from any of the various clothes rack at the numerous tuxedo shops he and his mom had visited: in fact, it’s either the highest designer or some sort of Kurt Hummel trademark. He’s got a jacket and a hot pink waistcoast, a bedazzled bowtie and gleaming shoes, and his hair is done perfectly and he just looks – _perfect._

“So do you,” Kurt says, giving him a not-so-subtle glanceover and smiling so wide it reaches his eyes. “Here, I—” He holds out a pink flower, roughly the same color as the pink under his jacket, and he looks a little abashed. “I wasn’t sure if I should, but –”

“I love it,” Blaine says, no hesitation in his voice. He steps closer. “Pin it on for me?” and Kurt does, with slightly shaky fingers, to the lapel of his jacket.

“You both look wonderful,” Carole chimes in from the doorway, her hand over her chest. When Blaine looks at Burt, he’s halfway astonished to see the muscles in his jaw working, like he’s trying hard to bite back some display of emotion he doesn’t want to show.

It’s really, really touching, and it’s not even _his dad._

“We should go,” Kurt says, joining Blaine at his side, “Mercedes in the driveway, and that girl is not afraid to honk.”

“One picture first!” Carole calls, producing a digital camera from nowhere and pointing it at them with as much vigor as a professional paparazzo. “Boys, you first,” and before Blaine even has time to slide his arm around Kurt’s waist, it flashes in their face in three quick bursts. “Okay, now one with Kurt and Burt –” and Blaine steps out of the way so Kurt’s dad can fill his role, and he looks so proud to be standing next to him, his son, that it makes Blaine’s heart hurt a little, “now all three of you—” and Burt is tugging Blaine over by the jacket and wrapping one arm around each boy, and three more flashes, and then Carole’s yelling, “Finn, Finn, get down here!” and Finn comes trampling down the steps looking pretty good for a guy who hadn’t thought to rent his tux until yesterday, and he grins and steps in for a picture with them, and then he grins a little wider when Carole asks him to crouch down because the top of his head’s not in the frame.

Mercedes actually does start honking somewhere around the second to last picture, so hugs and kisses and well-wishes are passed around the room and then the three of them head out and climb none-too-gracefully into the car.

Rachel’s house is much of the same, except Blaine’s pretty sure her dad _was_ a professional paparazzo at one point in time. He is scarily good at his job, at making sure everyone gets at least one picture with everyone else, at group photos and date photos and guy photos and girl photos and jumping photos and smiling photos and laughing photos and – the list goes on and on. Blaine is thoroughly exhausted when the whole ordeal is over, and they haven’t even gotten to the dancing portion yet.

Dinner is nice. Sam accidentally knocks over his glass of water, but on prom night girls apparently have some sort of superpowers and Santana and Brittany both move so fast out of their seats that not a drop gets on anybody’s dress.

Prom itself, because the public board of education in Lima is seemingly full of cheapskates, is held in the William McKinley High School gym. At least they’d sprung for decorations: it’s a corny _Dancing With The Stars_ theme (Puck had suggested _One Night In Paris_ , and it’d been the forerunner for a long time until Figgins had done a little Internet research) and the streamers and balloons look out of place, but over all, with the lights dimmed, it doesn’t look half bad.

“You do realize,” Kurt says, when Blaine hops out of the car and offers him his arm, “that we’re going to be the first gay couple to attend prom at this school? Possibly in the entire state of Ohio.”

“I don’t care,” Blaine responds. Kurt looks at him, surprised, and he shrugs. “I’ll worry about being the posterboys for equality in the public school system later. Tonight, I just want to enjoy prom with my boyfriend.”

Kurt smiles and takes his hand and, accompanied by thirteen of their best friends, they head inside.

They’d forgone a DJ this year; Blaine knew that, but he didn’t really know the specifics. When they cross through the gym doors, he sees why.

“You’re joking,” he says, a wide grin blooming across his face, because there are fifteen boys on the makeshift stage, standing in front of four strategically placed microphones, and they’re all wearing matching ties and blazers. He can hardly hear the song they’re singing – he thinks it’s something by Ke$ha, maybe, and gloms of students have already taken over the dance floor – but he thinks how awesome it is to see them up there, off-campus, performing at an informal event.

“Kind of like your worlds are colliding, right?” Kurt whispers, bumping Blaine’s hip with his own.

“Another one of your doings?”

“I plead the fifth.”

Blaine’s eying the bowl of punch when Mercedes and Rachel approach them, each grabbing a hand. “We called first dance,” Rachel says, tugging Blaine towards the floor, and Kurt laughs and gives Mercedes a twirl before the two of them follow suit.

Dancing with Rachel is fine, even if she keeps staring at his lips every twenty seconds like she’s remembering what it felt like to kiss them. The Warblers are singing fun, upbeat songs, and they trade partners after the second, and Blaine grinds all up on Mercedes like that was what he was made to do.

Thad taps on the microphone about twenty minutes later, for their first break in music, and he clears his throat while the room falls quiet. “Hi guys,” he says, looking at surprised at the way his voice booms out over the gymnasium. “We’re the Dalton Warblers, and we’re here to make sure you have an amazing prom night.” Everyone claps, and they take polite little bows. “Now, we’re going to slow down things a bit, so grab the person that you love – or like – or want to take home to your mother, and hold them close.” He scans the dance floor until his eyes find Blaine’s, and then he grins and reaches again for the mic. “And this one goes out to Blaine Anderson,” he adds, before getting back in formation, and all at once the guys break into a softer, slower version of _Teenage Dream._

Blaine locks eyes with Kurt; suddenly, the girls have vanished, and it’s just the two of them. “Our song,” Blaine says, suggestively, and Kurt’s mouth curls up into a faux grimace.

“Who says this is our song? Who ever dictated a Katy Perry song as being _our song_?”

“Oh, come on, Kurt, don’t kill the moment.” Blaine extends a palm, waiting. “Will you dance with me?”

Kurt’s eyes flicker over to the floor, where guys and girls – only guys and girls – are coming together, sidling close. No one bats an eyelash at them. Blaine’s pretty sure the two of them will get a head or two turning. He’s also pretty sure he doesn’t care.

Kurt takes his hand.

“I didn’t think I was ever going to get to slowdance with someone at my prom,” he admits, and his arms move to circle around Blaine’s shoulders, and Blaine wraps his own arms around Kurt’s waist.

“I’m lucky, you know,” Blaine tells him, looking into his eyes. “That I get to be the first.”

Blaine has always wanted to kiss the guy he likes in the middle of a dance floor – in his fantasies, it might not have been the McKinley gym, but he’s not too picky – and he does that, now, the chorus of _Teenage Dream_ in his ears, Kurt’s eyes fluttering shut, and it’s sweet and chaste and completely perfect.

The song ends, as they’re apt to do, and is replaced with another uptempo one, so he regrettably releases his grip on Kurt’s waist and they break apart. “Dance circle!” Rachel yells, throwing herself between them again, and without warning they’re dragged over towards the rest of the Glee club, where Puck and Lauren are dancing dirty and Finn and Quinn are both sort of swaying awkwardly to the beat and Mike is dancing circles around them all and everyone is utterly unselfconscious, arms in the air, faces tipped back towards the twinkle lights around the room. It’s _fun._ It’s so much fun.

Blaine slowdances with Kurt four times and every girl in the Glee club at least once. The room starts to empty out around 10:30, with the promise of afterparties high and unhidden, and they’re practically the last ones there by eleven. The Warblers left around ten, replaced by Figgins and his iTunes library, and when the music stops altogether it’s time to leave. They’re still one big group, talking and laughing as they leave the gym, all of them, none of them really paying attention –

– which is why they’re surprised to see eight members of the football team in the parking lot, waiting around, Styrofoam cups held high.

They all seem to sense it before it actually happens; the girls shriek, and the guys try to duck but it’s no use: sixteen bright red Slushies are flying their way, and flying fast. They get drenched, all of them, their suits and dresses ruined, their faces, their carefully styled hair. Blaine’s muscles clench with the dreaded expectation, and it’s just as icy sharp, just as painful as the first time.

“Just cause you went to New York doesn’t many you’re worth anything, losers,” one of the football players says, tossing his empty cups aside.

“Yeah,” another chimes in, a guy with big arms and not much else going for him, “you’ll never be popular here.”

“Later, Gleetards,” the first laughs, and he turns and walks away calmly, the rest of the team following suit.

Puck and Finn immediately start after them. The girls have to grab them by the jacket to hold them back, but they’re struggling and yelling obscenities at their backs, and Puck keeps shouting, “I’m going to kick your ASS, I swear to GOD,” which looks pretty ridiculous coming from a guy with red Slushie dripping from his mohawk.

“This _sucks_ ,” Sam says when the football players have disappeared, shaking ice off of his suit coat. “My mom’s going to kill me.”

“I loved this dress,” Brittany says sadly. “I got a matching one for my Barbie doll.”

“Anyone have a giant washing machine?” Lauren asks.

None of them laugh, because it doesn’t seem very funny. Blaine can hardly feel his neck.

“Wait,” Puck says, all of a sudden, rounding on them all. “Wait, hold up. Everyone follow me.”

They don’t have a whole lot of options – no one wants to climb into their cars the way they are, and it’s not like they’re going to show up at a party looking like the victims of a recent mass murder. So Puck takes off towards the back of the school and they all follow, curiously, as he leads them through a gate and over a hedge and into an undeveloped neighborhood, where there are only a few houses dotting the street. “Puck,” Artie says, wheeling forward on the bumpy ground, “where are you taking us?”

“You’ll see.”

“Is this illegal?” Kurt asks. “I do not want to besmirch the memory of my prom night any more than the artificial flavoring of a gas station dessert has already done.”

“Just come on,” Puck says, and then they round a house with all of the lights turned off and he stops them with one hand and says, “Here.”

They’re in front of a fairly average inground pool. There’s nothing spectacular about it, aside from the fact that the water’s clean and the pool is uncovered, and no one seems to be around.

“Where, exactly, have you taken us?” Quinn asks, looking at him with the utmost annoyance.

Puck grins like he’s done something brilliant. “Lauren asked for a giant washing machine. This is pretty much the next best thing.”

Fifteen people respond back with _no_ at the exact same time.

“No. Absolutely not,” Quinn says. “First off, it’s May, and second, we have no idea whose pool that is.”

“Don’t worry, babe, I clean this pool for the people who live here. They’re in Florida for a month. No one’ll ever know.”

“No,” Santana says.

“No,” Tina says.

“Hell to the no,” Mercedes says.

Blaine shrugs and steps forward. “I’m in.”

They all turn to look at him in surprise. Kurt, especially, looks concerned for his mental health. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Yeah, why not? The Slushie has to come off somehow.”

“I’m in too,” Sam agrees.

“Does anyone have any floaties?” Brittany asks, looking around with concern.

It takes a little coaxing for the more stubborn members of the group, but for whatever Godforsaken reason, they eventually all agree. Like it’s some sort of bonding experience. Like that some sort of magic will occur when their feet touch the water. “On three,” Puck says, the toes of his shoes balanced right on the edge of the pool. “And if you don’t jump you get pushed in, so you might as well jump.”

“I assume I get a special pass?” Artie says, looking a little terrified at the possibility, and the guys laugh and agree to carry him in the shallow end provided none of their balls shrivel up and fall off before they get the chance.

“One…”

Blaine looks to his left and right, Mercedes on one side, Kurt on the other. They grin and slip their hands into his.

“Two…”

Lauren kicks her high heels to the side and crouches her knees, like she’s getting into position.

“Three!”

– they all shout together and then, screaming foolishly, like the crazy high school students they are, they crash into the pool, all of them, like one body, and the water is freezing but not nearly as cold as the Slushies, and they surface one-by-one and laugh and splash around and Puck dunks Finn’s head under the water and for some bizarre reason they stay in for nearly twenty minutes, goofing off, until Rachel’s teeth start chattering so hard that they can’t understand her, and when they climb out, they look like drowned rats, their prom outfits drenched and clinging to their bodies, makeup running down the girls’ faces, and they look terrible, but somehow, that doesn’t matter.

They’re happy.

Their happiness matters.

They walk back to the high school in companionable silence, dripping water as they go.

“This,” Kurt whispers, sliding a wet arm around Blaine’s wet body, “was the best prom ever.”

***

Blaine’s parents aren’t home.

They’re visiting his paternal grandparents for the weekend, and even though his mom had been upset that she was missing one of the most important days of her son’s life, he’d assured her that it didn’t really matter because he’d probably stay at Sam’s house or Mike’s house afterwards, one of those guys from school, and she seems so thrilled with the fact that he has actual male friends that like him that she eventually folds and gives in.

“Kurt,” Blaine says, once they’re back in the parking lot, and everyone’s saying goodbye, getting in their respective cars. “Do you want to spend the night at my house?”

He knows there could’ve been a lot of implications about that sentence, what with it being prom night, the night with the most expectations – but the greatest thing about his relationship with Kurt is that they don’t have to rely on expectations. They are what they are without the hidden meanings, the code words, the needing to decipher.

“Um.” Kurt licks his lips and looks at Blaine. “Yeah. That’d be nice.” He turns his head over his shoulder. “Finn, cover with me for Dad?”

“Sure, but you owe me,” Finn says, but when Kurt shoots him a dubious expression, he shrugs. “Okay, fine, fine. I’ve got your back.”

Mercedes drops them off at Blaine’s house with a knowing smile, and she wiggles her fingers at them before calling out, “Bye, boys, have fun!”

Blaine’s palms are sweating for no particularly good reason. He and Kurt have spent the night together before – but, he realizes, not since they’ve begun dating. That makes it feel a little more heavy, a little more real. He pulls his keys out of his back pocket. It turns in the lock, and he feels like the click is magnified by ten. “Kurt,” Blaine says, swinging the door open and stepping through into the darkened hallway, “I just wanted to tell you that tonight was one of the best –”

He’s cut off, surprisingly, by Kurt’s lips.

Kurt closes the door and pushes Blaine up against it, letting out a breathy little gasp that lets Blaine know he’s not the only one surprised by the action. Kurt kisses him hard and messy, his hands curling around Blaine’s neck, his lips warm and slick against his own, and Blaine can taste cherry and the faintest hint of chlorine, and he groans and pulls Kurt closer.

“I,” Kurt says, pressing a kiss along his jaw with every word, “have – been – wanting – to – do – this – all – night.”

“No better time than now,” Blaine agrees, tipping his head backwards against the door when he feels Kurt’s teeth against his neck, light at first, and then with more pressure, and Kurt bites and sucks lightly at the skin, moving forward in a direction they’ve never taken before. This is Blaine’s new favorite direction. He wants to travel in this direction forever.

Blaine’s fingers curl into Kurt’s jacket, still damp, and he takes in a shaky breath through his nose when Kurt kisses him again, just as hard. “We should – we should get out of the doorway,” he whispers, because this is not the most romantic spot in the house, not even in the top ten, and Kurt nods and pulls away but just a little, allowing him to lead him towards his bedroom upstairs.

Blaine’s hands are sweaty again, this time with anticipation. With want.

The thing is, though, they’re still trailing water behind them, and Blaine makes a last minute decision and veers to the left at the top of the stairs instead of the right, into the guest bathroom, shutting the door behind them. Kurt looks at him inquisitively but not unwillingly, and Blaine, pausing to kiss him again, more soft and sure, slowly and carefully reaches up and pushes the sleeves of his jacket up and away from his shoulders.

Kurt watches him for a second before helping out, tugging at the material, letting it drop to a wet pile on the floor, and then he mirrors the image with Blaine’s jacket. “Can I –?” Blaine asks, gesturing towards his waistcoat, and Kurt nods, just barely, and Blaine’s fingers move to the buttons. They lock eyes while he does this, one at a time, taking it slowly because the last thing he wants to do is overwhelm him. _He_ wants this, sure, but not if Kurt doesn’t.

The look in Kurt’s eyes says that it’s not unrequited.

 _Too much clothing,_ Blaine thinks, kind of desperately, because once that’s gone he’s still got a long sleeve shirt underneath, but Kurt, once again, surprises him. He knocks Blaine’s fingers out of the way and undoes the buttons himself, more deftly this time, more expertly, until finally his shirt’s hanging open and all Blaine can see is a long expanse of smooth, pale skin. He pulls him in for another kiss, one hand pressing against his chest experimentally, right along his ribcage, and Kurt hums his approval into his mouth.

Blaine doesn’t remember turning the shower on, except that he’s sticky with sweat and chlorine and faint traces of Slushie, and Kurt doesn’t complain, and suddenly they’re both fumbling for their clothes so quickly that Blaine nearly trips trying to get out of his pants. He can’t stop staring at Kurt. His legs are long and lean, and his shoulders broad, and he wants to kiss him, so badly, every part of him – he’s backing into the too-hot stream in the shower before he’s even completely naked, his boxers still clinging to his hips, his back pressed flat against the cool tile, but it doesn’t matter, because a second later Kurt’s joining him, pushing aside the shower curtain and kissing him fiercely.

“Kurt,” Blaine says, and his hands are running slowly and thoroughly down Kurt’s sides, thumbing over soft skin and muscles, fingernails dragging lightly across his hipbones, “can I touch you?”

“Yes,” Kurt answers, nearly moans, and Blaine doesn’t waste any time, reaches down and touches the soft skin of Kurt’s inner thigh, first, and then upwards, curls his fingers around him, gives him a few gentle, easy strokes to make sure this is still okay, and Kurt groans again quietly and rests his forehead against Blaine’s shoulder heavily, like he can’t hold it up himself.

It’s wet and cramped but so good like this, and Blaine quickens his pace when he can feel Kurt’s hips jerking forward against him, and it’s his first time, both of their first times, but it still feels so _natural_ , having Kurt here, up against him like this.

Afterwards, after Kurt’s finished and their kissing is more languid, slow, even though Blaine’s achingly hard, he edges the water pressure down to a dull trickle, and Kurt laughs quietly against Blaine’s skin and says, “Was this premeditated? Did you have this planned all along?”

“No,” Blaine says, honestly, carding his fingers softly through Kurt’s hair in the back. “I’m just lucky.”

“I’m fairly positive I’m the lucky one here,” Kurt says, and he disentangles himself from Blaine’s arms, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, he’s lowering himself to his knees.

“Kurt,” Blaine breathes, watching him, “you don’t – you don’t have to –”

“I know,” Kurt replies, smiling easily, finally dragging his soaked boxers torturously slow down his hips. “But I want to.”

***

Blaine wakes up in the morning, naked from the waist up, tangled in the sheets, and Kurt’s warm arm thrown haphazardly around his chest. Even though the sun is peeking in through the parted blinds, bathing everything in warm light, Blaine smiles and buries down deeper into the blankets, breathing in the smell of Kurt. He immediately falls back asleep.

The second time he wakes up it’s to Kurt kissing him, just once, soft on the lips. “Mm,” he says, his voice rough with sleep, “good morning.”

“Good morning,” Kurt returns, briefly pressing his nose into Blaine’s cheek. “I have to go.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I do. I promised my dad I’d be home in time for brunch.”

“Brunch isn’t an exact time, you know,” Blaine says, half-whiningly. “You can eat a meal at four in the afternoon and still technically call it brunch.”

“I have to go,” Kurt repeats, “but call me later?”

Blaine makes a big deal out of sighing and propping himself up on his elbows, but he can’t stop from smiling, so his act falls pretty flat. “I will,” he promises. “I definitely, definitely will.”

***

His parents aren’t due back for a good five hours, so Blaine makes a quick sandwich in the kitchen and then settles down in front of his computer. When he signs onto Facebook, he’s got a handful of notifications, but the most recent one catches his eye:

 _Relationship request – Kurt Hummel._

Biting back a smile, Blaine shakes his head and clicks _confirm._

 

>  _fin._

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from a song by Quiet Company.


End file.
